


The Beginning of Forever

by ashesandhoney



Series: Full Circle Verse [2]
Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Almost the First Time, F/M, Sexual Content, Sexual Inexperience, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-13 02:41:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2134050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will and Tessa's wedding night and the start of their marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Will closed the door. Then he locked it. Then he checked the lock. He considered dragging a dresser in front of that but decided against it. The room was warm, a fire in the grate and the witchlight shone at about half strength making it seem smaller and cozier than it really was. It was a small suite of rooms, larger than either of their individual rooms had been with a private sitting room and a bedroom beyond it. All the furniture was the heavy carved wood that filled the rest of the Institute but it was theirs now. Will took a moment to appreciate that. Theirs. From here on out, things would be theirs.

Tessa had walked toward the big window and pushed back the curtain. She was beautiful. She'd been beautiful since the moment he had met her but the gold of the wedding gown and the way her hair had been swept back and up in a cascade of curls and the way she had looked at him all day was like a spell. She wasn’t quite real and hadn’t been since he’d approached her at the ceremony. The gold was edged in white lace. Simpler than the style might have called for but more fitting to her for it. There were gold bands wound into her hair that caught the firelight. She turned and sat on the window seat. Perched on the edge. Eyes just a fraction too wide.

"How are you?" he asked her pulling an ottoman over to sit in front of her. She was taller than he was like this and he had to look up at her.

"I want to do it again," she said.

"You're kidding," he said, "You can't want to do that whole hellish day again."

"No," she shook her head and said more emphatically, "No." He was glad that she saw it the same way he did. Women weren’t supposed to like hearing that their wedding had been hellish. The groom certainly wasn’t supposed to declare it.

Her eyes roamed the room, taking it in then taking him in. He reached out and she put her hands in his. He ran a thumb over her knuckles then raised them so that he could kiss her fingers.

"I want to get married again," she said. "I just don't want the rest of those people to be there. I don't think I want anyone to be there. Just us." She squeezed his hands and looked down before whispering, "I didn't realize just how public it was going to be. I didn't realize how many people would be there. I think I’d imagined that it would be about us.”

"Instead we got the Clave Politics sideshow," Will said unkindly waving his hand in the direction of the door and the party that they had finally escaped but was still going on somewhere floors below them. Charlotte had taken over hosting duties and told them to leave when she'd seen Will starting to glare and Tessa's face fall into the wide eyed look she was giving him now. "If one more person offers me congratulations, I might throttle them. Even if they genuinely meant it. "

That made Tessa laugh, "Me too."

Will would be taking over the Institute only a few months after the wedding and the Conclave wasn't entirely pleased with a future led by an 18 year old who had been considered a drunk and a bad-natured joke for most of his adolescence. That his fiance had such an odd story and wasn’t entirely Nephilim had just added fuel to rumours and dissent. They hadn’t so much gotten married as they found themselves throwing a stage show intended to convince the assembled Shadowhunters that they were both respectable and normal. Even more than that, it was a way of proving to the Clave that William Herondale was a mature and capable adult worth following into battle. Charlotte had been helping him set up a series of these shows since his promotion had been announced. That his wedding had been dragged into it was something neither he nor Tessa had been able to convincingly argue against. Though they’d discussed the possibility of elopement and leaving the country as the guest list had ballooned.

The wedding had been held in the ballroom and it had been full of people. Most of them people unknown to either the bride or groom, who had one blood relation between them present. Tessa didn’t count the Starkweather cousins though she had been charming and kind to them in the weeks they’d stayed at the Institute before the ceremony. 

"Do you think they'll ever accept me?" Tessa asked him, her face very serious.

There had been comments. Comments all evening. Little whispered comments that still managed to make it back to them. Will who had spent years with the Nephilim whispering about his drunkenness, his whoring, his miserable personality, didn't flinch as those rumours crossed the tables again.

But Tessa hadn’t truly been exposed to the horrors of the high society that hid behind the Conclave’s mask of civility. Tessa's expression tightened at every mention of "warlock" as they moved though the crowds. Will had heard the word "whore" appended to that once but Tessa hadn't. It took every bit of Will's hard earned self control not to wade into them and find the right person to hit. Starting a fight would legitimize it, turn it from a rumour into a a political weapon. Charlotte told him that. Gideon reminded him. Even his father, during that afternoon when he'd first brought Tessa to his family, had told him much the same thing. So he hadn't. He hadn't so much as snapped a retort.

That every time he felt the anger rise he still expected to feel Jem’s hand close on his arm did not improve his mood. He’d found himself looking up and scanning the crowd for those familiar silver eyes when he needed someone to understand. Not just to tell him why it was a bad idea but to truly understand why breaking that woman's nose was so enticing.

"You saved them all when you destroyed Mortmain," Will said to Tessa. Jem would have understood that anyone who said things to her that made her look at him like this should have had something broken. He sat up straighter so that he could cup her face between his hands. "You are strong and brave and kind and a better person than all of them. They'll come to see it. I promise." He kissed her. Gently. Not the public kisses of the wedding and the reception but a real kiss. She leaned into it and he stood, pulling her up with him so that he could wrap his arms around her. "I don't care about them," he murmured into her mouth.

"You should," she said back through the kiss.

"Not tonight," he said.

"No, not tonight," she agreed mouth still against his.

"I'm going to take you to bed now," he said.

"Good," she said kissing across his jaw and down his neck. He swung her up into his arms. The corset and the billows of skirt made it uncomfortable for both of them. She wrapped her arms around his neck and they laughed their way into the bedroom.

They'd chosen this suite of rooms for this chamber. Charlotte and Henry had offered to move out of the larger suite on the main floor early so that they could have it but they'd declined. This room had high ceilings and built in bookshelves along one wall though they were empty right now. It also had a balcony which looked out over the courtyard and the gates. The bed was huge. Large enough for five people and raised up on a platform that Will almost stumbled on because by that point Tessa's dress had already snagged on the door frame and they were laughing too hard.

It might have been that they'd almost fallen but it was more likely the stress of the day and the comments and the planning that had come before it. Whatever it was, when Will laid her down on the bed and leaned over her, they were both still giggling. It felt right to Will that they would start here. Start with laughter.

"We're going to build our entire lives on this moment," he said.

"Don't make this stressful too," Tessa said but she was still grinning.

"It isn't, I don’t mean it to be stressful, this moment is already perfect," he said. "We're going to build our entire lives on laughter and love and us, together. We're a we now. You and me. Forever. Forget the rest of them."

She twisted her fingers into his shirt and pulled him down to kiss. He wore black ceremonial gear with runes picked out in gold along the edges. It was designed for wedding ceremonies and the top buttons could be undone easily so the bride could draw the marriage rune over his heart. She pushed him back so that she could open those buttons and smooth her hand over it. She'd drawn it. Her first rune drawn in ceremony, not lessons, not practice. She always smiled when she finished a rune. She had said once that it was as though the magic of the Grey Book was telling her that yes, yes she really was one of them.

Her hand was narrow against him and she tapped out his heartbeat with her fingers. He put his hand on the same place on her though the mark he'd drawn hadn't stayed. Like all runes ever laid on her, it had vanished into her skin like ink sinking into water. The crowd had gasped audibly when it had happened. It was the point that the day had started to go downhill. She smiled at him now. Softer. Not a silly grin but something warmer. Something that made him forget that anyone had gasped at them or made little comments under their breaths. 

Hands to hearts, he leaned into her and kissed again. She slid her hand lower and started to undo the rest of this buttons. He tossed the jacket away. He wore nothing below it and she let her hands wander over him. Slowly. Stroking scars, tracing runes, outlining lines of muscle. He leaned over her, sitting on the edge of the bed and propped up by extended arms. She ran her hands down his arms.

Her fingers were cool but her skin was soft and the expression on her face, like he was some sort of revelation, melted his heart. He held himself still for her. It wasn’t easy but if she wanted to go slow, they would go slow. It took her a long time but her fingers finally found the gray mark on his chest and traced it as she had traced others but her eyes found his face as she did.

"He should have been here," Will said. Not sure if he meant at the wedding itself or in his place at the wedding. He didn’t let himself dwell on it.

"They're not going to let him out at all for another year," Tessa said and Will could hear his own anger when he'd heard that news in her voice.

"I know," Will said. Her hand was still covering the rune. He said, "You didn't wear it."

They both knew what he was talking about. They'd discussed it weeks before. She hadn't taken the jade pendant off since Jem had given it to her. Will had told her to wear it for the wedding but she hadn't. She'd worn just a gold chain at her throat, no pendant at all. No angel, no jade.

"There was already so much talk. Sophie recommended against it. Jem and I, it was public enough that people knew," she said. "I carried it but not where they could see it." She pulled it out, on it’s own chain. A circle of stone against her palm. It had been tucked low in the dress against her skin and when Will took it from her the stone was warm enough that it felt to him like a piece of her.

"Sit up," he said moving back. She did, watching him carefully. Her face serious. Not wary, not quite, but as though she weren't sure what his reaction was going to be. He climbed up on the bed behind her and removed the plain necklace, dropping the chain off the bed onto the floor and reclasping her pendant in its place. Did she wish it wasn’t him here with her? He wondered as his hands settled on her shoulders, warm skin and a scratchy edging of lace against his palms.

"Is this dress comfortable?" he asked because he needed to say something that wasn’t that last thought.

"God, no," she said, "Did you want to try it on?"

"If it means taking it off of you, yes, I'll wear it," he said. She leaned back into him and looked up at him. The green at her throat made her more Tessa somehow. Less a shimmering bride and more his Tessa. Complicated, strange and maybe a little sad but full of humour and compassion. The look in her eyes left no doubt that she wanted him there. He pressed a kiss to her upturned forehead.

"You won't like it," she teased with her head tilted back against his bare chest. Her hair was falling down now though it had lasted through endless dances and rounds of congratulations. The strands trailed over his stomach when she moved her head. 

"Perhaps not," he admitted. "How about we take it off of you and no one wears it? Or we could go see if that long lost great uncle of mine has finished drinking his way through the wine cellar and talk him into wearing it out of here."

"That would not help your reputation as a mad drunk yourself," she told him as she twisted so that she was kneeling, facing him in a cascade of white and gold.

"Maybe I want to go back to being a mad drunk," he said.

“A mad drunk in a wedding dress?” she asked.

“I always said that I would be a radiant bride," he said with all the grandiosity he could manage while shirtless and flushed then he pursed his lips and said, "Though I don’t know that I’d be able to hold a candle to you."

"If you want it off, you're going to have to start with the buttons down the back. I can't reach them myself." she said climbing off the bed. Standing beside the bed, orange firelight flickering and white witchlight glowing over his bare skin, he attempted to undo the tiny pearl buttons. He could feel her gaze on him. She resisted actually laughing at him but he could feel suppressed humour in her body. A vibration of almost laughter. She was touching his shoulders, brushing fingers over his skin and that was too much of a distraction to fight with clothing.

His frustration flared.

He leaned up and put his lips against her ear and whispered, "I'll buy you another one," and then grabbed the fabric and pulled. Hard. Tessa yelped and had to grab the poster of the bed to keep from falling as the dress split with a hiss of tearing silk. The pearls ticked as they rained to the floor and rolled away. They would be finding them for years, behind furniture or in the little gaps in the floorboards.

She spun around to look at him, incredulous. He grinned back and pulled the now ruined dress up over her head and dropped it in a heap. The silk where the buttons were attached was shredded. She tried to imagine explaining it to the new maid but Will kissed her and those thoughts fled as he pulled her close. She wore enough undergarments that she was still very nearly dressed but he was working on that.

"Don't you dare ruin this corset too," she muttered to him and he begrudgingly unlaced it properly and then threw it at the empty book shelf as she collapsed back onto the bed taking her first unrestricted breath in hours.

"Why is there so much of this?" Will asked holding up something white with lace edging that he figured was a petticoat.

"Because I am a proper lady," Tessa told him in her best Jessamine impersonation, down to the fake accent. It was not a good impersonation.

"Can't you be a proper lady in less white linen?" he asked. She raised her hips so that he could pull off the last of the skirts. "How is there more under that? How did you move or breathe all day? I have seen you run in a dress. How did you run in a dress like this?”

She laughed at him and pulled the shift off as he finally loosened the tie on the drawers. She lay back on the top of the covers with nothing on. He stood over her as the humour warred with nerves across her face. They'd been bare together only once and there had never been a moment like this. It had been faster, more desperate need, less gentle exploration.

He lay down beside her on his stomach and studied her face, ignoring the rest of her. That his mind was thinking about the exact curves of everything below her jaw line was hidden by his smile. When her expression relaxed into an answering smile, he leaned over and kissed her cheek, then her neck, then her bare shoulder. She rolled towards him and returned the pattern, cheek, throat, shoulder. Bolder, he picked a new path, throat, chest, right over her invisible rune, stomach. The red marks where the clothing had pinched were fading back into the smooth pale porcelain of her skin. She followed the reverse, lips against his stomach, over his heart, just below his ear.

They passed this game back and forth until Tessa climbed up into his lap and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply. The feeling of all of her against him made him forget his own name. Her body was softer than his. There was strength in her but it wasn't enough to overpower the sensation he had that she was breakable and precious and he needed to be careful and gentle with her like this.

Tessa, on the other hand, was through with careful and gentle. Her hands were on the button of his pants. He had to lift her to get them off. As she settled back into his lap, her bare legs over his, he felt her stomach muscles contract where she pressed against the length of him. He hands tightened on her waist as he tried to think around the feeling of her skin against so much of him. What do I do next? His imagination failed him completely.

"Let me go," she told him, her voice different. Deeper or darker or somehow more in a way that he couldn't articulate. He let go of her and looked up at her. He wondered as she ran her fingers through his hair how much of the amazement and the love and the desire beating their way through his chest was written on his face. When was the last time he'd been at a loss for words? How did he tell her?

"I love you," he said but it was a paltry stand in for what he was feeling at that moment.

"That's good," she said. "Because you're stuck with me, now." She rolled off of him and he felt a little like his skin was being doused in cold water where it was no longer against hers. She climbed up the bed and slid under the turned down covers. Her smile was an invitation but she crooked a finger at him just to make sure that he got the message.

He didn't slide in beside her. He slid in above her. She gathered him close and his heart eased to have her close again. Her arms around him and the teasing gone, she said, "I love you too, Will. I love you more everyday. I thought I loved you when I told you I would marry you but I didn't know how much I would love you now." He'd said something like that to her once. It felt like a lifetime ago.

He shifted her below him and watched her face as he found the right place. He had hurt her the first time. She had promised him it wasn't bad but the look of surprise and pain on her face when it had happened had burned itself into a place at the back of his mind and he didn't think he'd ever get it out. He had hurt her without knowing exactly what he was doing. He didn't really know much more now but he wasn't going to do it twice.

When her body resisted him, too tight or too nervous, he pulled away. Her eyes opened and she said his name. He murmured, “Hush,” and reached down with his hand and found the same place. She gasped and he swallowed hard trying to find a corner of his mind that was calm enough to tell him what to do.

"Does that hurt?" he asked gently, a finger finding the opening and sliding in. Not as large as his last attempt, this time there was no resistance. Her body closed around him. She shook her head and he pushed it in farther which made her eyes fall shut. Back and forth, a version of the rhythm they'd found that first time and it made her squirm a little. He could feel that resistance when he tried to slide in two fingers instead. Her lips were against his ear as she cuddled close to him and said, "Don't stop. You’re not hurting me." He pushed both in and her body made room for him. She murmured appreciatively against his shoulder, not really words just affirmative noises.

"Is this good?" he asked her as he experimented with rhythms. His own body was throbbing for him to stop dawdling but he could feel every change in her breathing and shift in her muscles like this and he liked it too much to stop. She nodded an answer to his question so he asked another, "Faster or slower?"

"Faster?" she suggested her voice breathy. She twisted her hips under his hand as he sped up and then slowed back down. Her body wasn't resisting him any more and she was both hotter and wetter than she had been when he'd started. He pushed in as far as his fingers could reach, cupping her with his palm. She jerked a little as he hit a part of the folds above the opening and she ground her hips down against his hand with a gasp that was less controlled than any sound he had ever heard her make. He met the motion by rubbing his palm across her, searching for that point that would bring that gasp again. Everything was slick and warm.

"Will," she murmured. Her upper body was twisted into him so that her head rested in the crook of his neck.

"Higher or lower?" he asked her.

"Higher," she told him and ducked her head a little tighter against his chest. He knew, knew from conversations and kisses that she did this when she blushed, when he'd embarrassed her. When she said the next part her voice was so soft that if she wasn't pressed into him, he wouldn't have been able to hear it, "Harder."

He used his fingers, sliding out of her and moving higher until she gasped again. He rubbed gently first and she squirmed against him. He slid his free hand around her to hold her hips in place before doing as she requested and rubbing harder.

"Oh god," she gasped out her fingers tightening in his hair and her breath coming in pants against his neck as she repeated his name like a prayer or a promise. It happened suddenly. Neither of them knew how to read the signs before her body tensed in his arms and muscles spasmed across her stomach. Her back arched, she pushed her hips into his hand moaning then sharply she pushed his hand away, her fingers clumsy on his wrist. She shook against him and he drew her close. Shocked. The violence of her reaction left him speechless again. He ran his hand up and down her back like his mother had done when he'd been very small and in need of comfort.

"I'm sorry," he said into her hair which was still half up in it's fancy pile of curls.

"Don't," she said. "Don't be sorry. I don't know exactly what that was but it wasn't bad. It really wasn't. Please Will, don't apologize. It surprised me. That's all."

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No," she said. "No,” she was calming, her body close to his, her skin no longer shivering at his touch. “I think that might have been incredible." She smiled up at him, curled close, eyes half closed. He kissed her lips gently. She lay her head against the pillow and played with his hair. It had been cut for the wedding and it wasn't long enough for her to wind her fingers through the strands the way she liked. He wondered how long he could get away with growing it as Head of the Institute. Were there restrictions on that? As the last of the shivering left her she was more relaxed than he could remember her being in weeks and he started to believe that maybe that had been incredible. 

He started unwinding her hair, tossing pins and bands and the little white flowers over the edge of the bed so that they wouldn't get lost in the covers. As he worked on this project she started to run her hands over his chest and then lower. He wasn't as hard as he had been, the shock of her reaction had taken something out of it. Her hand touching him there brought it back almost immediately. She explored, watching his face much as he had watched hers. She was too gentle to bring him anywhere near the release he wanted but there was something about that that was thrilling all on its own. He abandoned freeing her hair and just plunged his hands into it, holding on as her fingers moved over him.

They lay on their sides, just a little apart though her feet were tangled with his somewhere in the blankets. He reached down and gathered her hands, holding them in his and taking a few steadying breaths. He felt jumpy and needy and each glancing contact of her palm or tracing finger was making it worse. Her expression was a question that he answered in his gentlest voice, "I liked it, but if you want to," there was a pause as he searched for a vocabulary that he hadn't known he didn't have, "do it properly, I need a moment," he said. He ran the vocabulary he did have, most of it gleaned from dock workers and drunks in taverns and decided there wasn't a syllable of it that he was willing to use in the same room as her.

"Take a moment then," she said kissing his hands where they wrapped around hers. "Because I do want to do it properly."

"I can't decide which I like better," he told her in a low voice. "You when you're blushing and tentative or you when you're bold and demanding."

"I'm not demanding," she argued with pursed lips and an adorable little scowl.

"You could be," he said. "I'd do anything you asked me to."

"I'll remember that," she said as she leaned up to kiss him hard and fast through a smile. He let her hands go and tilted her face up to kiss her slower and deeper. He pushed closer and she responded by rolling onto her back and drawing him down with her.

This time, coming together was as easy as breathing. She groaned as she pulled him closer or maybe he had made that sound, he wasn't sure. Her body had to adjust to make room for him but he moved slowly, a little deeper and a little deeper each time. There was no resistance, she didn't wince and though her mouth fell open, there was no pain on her face. He watched her to know when he went too fast or too deep before she was ready. The lines between them were already blurring. He moved against her slowly at first as the jumpy feeling in his skin changed form, stretching and curling into mounting heat and pressure somewhere in his stomach.

"Faster or slower?" he asked her and his voice sounded rough.

"Faster," she said and he let instinct lead as the rhythm between them changed. There was a little of that desperation and need in it but it felt different than it had all those months ago. The first time had been drenched in guilt and grief and fear. The love had shone through and pulled them together in spite of it all but this was different. There was no fear here and the guilt and the grief had molded themselves into a sadness shared. A sadness wrapped around the same missing piece in two different lives.

With that thought he slowed again, wrenching control back from his instincts. He wrapped his hand around her necklace and used it to pull her face towards him. He was probably too rough when he did it. Her head jerked a little but he caught her neck to steady her as he kissed her mouth. The pendant caught against her skin by his palm. Understanding him, in a way he imagined no one else ever would, her hand found that spot on his shoulder where the silvered rune lay as she kissed him back hard. The same missing piece.

The intensity changed. Harder now, not just faster. Her hips pushing into him as he thrust hard and even. Her forehead creased a little which each thrust that pushed her back. He found himself watching it. Her eyes shut, her lips parted and her reactions written across her face. When he got too close, when that pressure started to build to a point that felt unbearable, he stopped.

"Do you want to do it again?" he asked in that same rough voice. He pulled away far enough that their bodies separated and it felt like losing a piece of himself.

"It?" she asked looking confused and as unfulfilled as he felt, "Are we finished?"

"I'm not finished," he said grinning at her. "This isn't finished. I meant to say the thing where I made you scream. Do you want to do that again?" Her eyes were wide, nervous, but it wasn’t the nervousness that came from fear, it was a nervousness born of anticipation.

"Yes," she said flushing but not looking away from him, "Now?"

He answered her with a nod before he reentered her sliding as far into her as he could, which pulled a gasp out of her. He held her face with one hand, keeping her looking at him. The other hand ran down the skin of her breasts and stomach and found that point between them where he disappeared inside her. He thrust gently again as he felt around looking for the right spot again.

"Lower," she told him and he watched her eyes squeeze shut and her mouth open just a fraction wider when he found the right spot. He grinned and stayed slow until she said nearly incoherent, "You can, I want, Will, please, harder."

When her back arched this time and her fingers dug into his back, hard enough to hurt, he knew what was coming. He moved his hand away and pulled her body close but he didn't stop the thrusts. This time when the pressure started to build, he let it. She shook around him as he let his attempts at keeping control fall away. The little murmured prayer was back, his name and the phrase, “yes please,” repeated where her mouth pressed against his cheek or his neck or his hair.

One of his hands was on her hip, the other tangled in her hair, neither near that place. He didn't understand this reaction or where it came from but he could feel the same tension running through her muscles as the time before. When her head fell back this time, she actually did scream as she clung to him. Her body tightened around him hard enough that it almost hurt and his release crashed through him as her's crested. Fingers tightening, muscles spasming, faces close enough that they were breathing the same air. If there was any doubt before that it was the same thing happening to both of them, it was blown away in that shared moment.

He collapsed on top of her and rolled to the side, afraid he would crush her. Her eyes were unfocused as they followed him. She was flushed and sweating and breathing like she'd been running for her life. He touched her face and they shared a smile.

"Do you regret it yet?" he asked her grinning.

"Regret what?" she asked blinking slowly at him.

"Marrying me," he said. "You just signed up to spend every night with me for a lifetime."

"William," she said rolling towards him, propping herself up on an elbow and looking down at him. "I think I could get used to that.”

“We should practice, frequently,” he said. He hooked his finger into her necklace again and pulled her down to kiss and then down against his side where she nestled in and put her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Her voice was sleepy but serious when she said, "I will never regret marrying you. I am unimaginably lucky to have you. I love you so much."

"I love you too," he said. She was already asleep when he stroked her cheek and said, "I'm the lucky one, Tess. I hope I can be even half the man you deserve."

Laying together, Will imagined he could see his lifetime stretched out in front of him. Every day of the rest of his life would start with her beside him. A lifetime started right here. 


	2. Mornings

Sunlight shone between the curtains, she mustn't have closed them all the way the night before. Tessa lay on her stomach, stretched out, with her face buried in the mass of her hair on the pillow. She felt heavy and warm and safe. She let herself drift in that feeling. She wore nothing. A weight lay across her lower back. Skin on skin.

"Will?" she whispered turning toward him. It was his arm draped around her waist. He still slept. Her hair was everywhere, tangled and there were still pins in it somewhere but she gathered it and pushed it behind her so that she could see him clearly. She lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows and just watched him sleep. She forgot sometimes that he was young. When he slept, he looked like a little boy. His hair was thick and soft between her fingers as she lifted it off his forehead and pushed it back. He stirred but didn't wake.

She lay her head back down on the pillow and watched his eyes move below his lids. His breathing and the early morning birds were the only sounds that she could hear. She wanted to let him sleep but she couldn't resist the urge to touch him. Sliding closer, she ran her fingers over his eye lids and down his jaw, tracing the shape of his lips and the curve of his throat. Down to his shoulder, past that line on his throat where his skin lightened, hidden from the sun by shirts and collars. The runes on his chest. The shape of his collar bone.

"Good morning," he muttered and she looked up at him, startled to find him awake.

"I love you," she said as a greeting.

"I love you," he said and the arm around her waist was no longer just a weight. His hand caught her hip and pulled her close to him. She turned herself so that her body lined up with his and she could wrap her arms around his neck.

"Morning are good," she said.

He kissed the end of her nose and then across her cheek and down to her jaw, bypassed her mouth and went back up the other side. Her fingers traced patterns on his neck as he kissed her forehead and her eyelids. She raised her face for a proper kiss and he pulled back. She tried to follow him but he caught her chin with a hand.

"You look so disappointed," he said smiling.

"Kiss me," she said.

"I will, in a moment," he said.

And his lips were back on the side of her neck, her head tilting back as she pushed her body in closer to his. His hands found her waist and pushed her back a little. A little incoherent protest escaped her. He was kissing a line down her chest. Each kiss was a physical thing. Marks on her skin that she was surprised to find were not actually visible.

She looked down at him as he took her breast into his mouth. This wasn't a single mark on a piece of skin, this lit up nerves across her entire body. She gasped and arched her back to push tighter into him. His hair brushed over her skin as he leaned close, sucking harder.

"Oh, Will," escaped her in a gasp when she felt a graze of teeth. He pulled away and before she could protest his hand was there, thumb rubbing over sensitive skin while he moved onto the other side and started all over again.

She didn't remember lying back but he was over her. His lips were flushed and he was smiling at her when he finally leaned in for the kiss he had promised her. She pulled him down and kissed him hard. Her breasts brushed against his chest and the skin sparked with every bit of contact. He was pressed down against her as he teased her mouth open so the kiss could deepen. He was heavy and solid. Hard muscles and skin like warm silk against ever inch of her.

She had to struggle a little to get her legs free. She held his face so the kiss wouldn't stop while she lifted a foot to run it up the back of his leg. This time he was the one that groaned so she did it again. Running a foot up over his calves to his thigh until her pinned hips meant she could't reach any higher. Her hands traced down, out of his hair over his shoulders down to the dip of his lower back where his hips narrowed. Their mouths were still together but the kiss was almost an afterthought. They were both thinking about her hands.

She ran her nails up over his sides. He gasped and pushed against her body harder, pressing her back against the mattress tight enough that she feared she wouldn't be able to breathe. She didn't stop. No more than a graze, it wouldn't leave marks but she ran her nails from the tops of his thighs, the lowest point she could reach, up his back to his back in a continuous line while he pressed his face into her neck and his body against hers.

"I want to do it properly," she whispered into his ear when her hands had made it to his neck and she'd spread her palms against his rapid pulse.

He pulled up enough to look at her and they shared a smile before he slid a little lower down her body and then pushed back up, sinking inside her. She was sore. It hadn't hurt the night before but this almost did. He was still pressed against her but now he was inside as well. Surrounded in him, the rest of the world was impossible. Things outside of Will and her body and this near pain, just didn't exist.

"Be gentle," she said as the first few movements made her stomach clench.

He slowed and the pressure eased, his face right above hers, and the tension drained. She relaxed and the soreness washed away in a wave of desire and the blue of his eyes above her. She started to trail her foot up his leg again and now she could feel the muscles under his skin as he moved against her. He did something with his hips that made it deeper and she gasped and grabbed on. Her legs wrapped around him as well, holding him close, clinging to that feeling.

"So you liked that?" his voice was breathy and it was more of a sensation against her skin than a sound.

"Do it again," she answered in a voice just as lost.

He did and then he did it again until her breathing was ragged and the muscles of her thighs had just started to tremble. When his hand left her breast and traveled down over the plane of her stomach, she knew exactly what he was planning. She locked her arms more tightly around his neck and he held her close as his hips and his fingers moved together. The release hit her hard, arching her back, clenching her fingers into fists and bringing a scream from her throat that she hadn't intended. This time he didn't stop in a panic to make sure she hadn't been hurt. This time he pressed his lips to hers and kept going.

Thoughts were impossible. She had felt the first one coming but the second one took them both by surprise and he let out a gasping groan that might have been her name while her legs tightened around his waist and she lost control of her muscles. His body pushed into hers a few last desperate times as his release finished shuddering through him.

"I didn't know," she said. Her face was tucked into some part of him but she wasn't entirely sure where the skin under her lips was, his neck maybe or his shoulder. Her voice had failed and she tried again, "I didn't know that it would be like that."

He made and inquisitive sound but didn't say anything. His heart was beating steady and loud.

"Explosive like that," she said. "You'd think people would mention it." But of course people wouldn't mention it. People would never mention it. They would never mention it either. But she'd never even heard a rumour of it. When people did talk about wedding nights, phrases like "wife's duty" were used and jokes were made about "lying back and thinking of England." She'd never heard anyone talk about it like it was wonderful and beautifully intense and left your whole body soaked in pleasure and warmth.

"I don't think it works like that for everyone," he said soundly a little embarrassed.

"Why?" she asked.

"I don't know," Will said. "Men in taverns say things but I never asked."

"Women made it sound like it would hurt and I should be prepared for it to be unpleasant but necessary. Even Charlotte warned me that it would hurt," she said. "It doesn't hurt and it is so much more than pleasant."

Will laughed at that, "It is so much better than pleasant and each time is better than the one before it."

She nodded. The first time had hurt, a little, that initial moment when they'd come together had been sharp and shocking. But Will had been there with his arms around her and his fingers on her face and his voice so soft and even that pain had been swept away by everything that came after.

"Maybe you're naturally talented," she said.

"Oh yes," he said. "I like that. I shall tell everyone. Naturally talented at killing things with swords and memorizing poetry and pleasing my wife in bed."

"You are," she was still drifting in that warm feeling like her body was less connected to herself and more connected to him. It was dreamlike. "And I am."

"You are?" he said. "Naturally talented? At which one? Swords?"

"No, I am your wife," she said liking the way it sounded and ignoring the swords comment.

"You are that. And naturally talented too. I was going to give you back if you weren't," he said.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said as he laughed into her hair somewhere above her.

"You may find that you are correct," he said in a voice just a touch pompous that made her shove him in the ribs, "I wouldn't give you up for anything," he said in a less joking tone and his arms tightened around just a little.

"Do you find it hard to move after?" she asked a little later. They still lay curled together, the sun rising and brightening the room. She had no idea what time it was and didn't care.

"I always find it hard to move away from you," he said. Her head was on his shoulder and his fingers ran up and down her arm where it lay across his chest. Her skin didn't feel like it was on fire where he touched it but every bit of contact felt essential to her continued survival like the ability to breathe was dependent on his continued presence.

He rolled her over. The sudden movement took her by surprise but he met her eyes with mischief on his face, "Maybe everyone who doesn't like it has been doing wrong. Like this." He rubbed his hips against hers. Side to side in a motion that could never have worked. He was still spent from the last time but she could feel that part of him against her thigh.

He was laughing. She had over heard one of his brother's friends refer to a girl as a dead fish. She flopped back under Will, as limp as she could be and his laughter overflowed. She couldn't stay still under him while he laughed like that and she reached up to pull him in. They wrestled a little laughing and struggling to try and find the least possible position. When he rolled onto his back and she climbed up on top of him, he paused with a very different expression on his face.

"This would work," he said. His hands sat on her waist and they guided her higher, so she was no longer straddling his thigh but his hips.

"I have no idea what to do," she admitted. He held her in place and she could feel that he was no longer soft below her. She swung her hips sideways as he had done when he was on top of her before. It wouldn't work to "do it properly" but it rubbed sensitive skin across sensitive skin and they both reacted. He groaned and grabbed her harder and her mouth fell open in a gasp.

"Do you want to try?" he asked and it wasn't a plea but it was very, very close to one.

"What do I do?" she asked him.

"I have as much of a clue as you do," he said as he reached down to position himself at her entrance.

"I'm not going to be able to walk later," she murmured.

"Walking is overrated," Will said.

"It is," she agreed as she pushed her body down over his.

Before he had been the one to slip into her but now it felt was more like she was pulling him in. His hands on her waist were insistent and she let them lead. If it had been deep before it was nothing compared to this. Her eyes fell shut and she cried out as her body came to rest against his. The sensation sent a tremour through her. Not the release that she'd felt before. This was something closer to anticipation. She held still. Her hands were braced on either side of his head and his fingers were still biting into her hips from their place on her waist.

"Will?" she said and she wasn't sure what she wanted from him. Reassurance maybe.

"My Tessa," he answered her pulling her down so their bodies were pressed together and he was still buried so deeply inside her she imagined that if she moved the right way she'd be able to feel him brush against her lungs.

"Move for me," he said into her mouth.

She shifted her hips and he slipped just a little farther inside. She hadn't thought there was more space. She pulled back and kept rising on her knees until there was only the briefest contact. Then she let go and slid all the back down. Deeper still. She cried out softly when their bodies met again. Will made a noise that was incoherent and she did it again. The feel of him leaving her and then the reentering was exquisite and perfect and yet not what she really wanted. Bodies touching, she twisted her hips instead of raising them and that came closer to matching up to her body’s need.

Being the one in control intimidated her but every touch, every whispered word, that Will gave her told her that it was amazing. She experimented and discovered that if she arched her hips the right way she could rub that spot on her body against his stomach as she moved. Having control of that was even more intimidating. She felt the release coming and pulled back from it in a moment of panic.

It left her sitting on him. Her hips against his. Her legs spread wide. Him so deeply inside her she was still surprised it didn't impede her breathing. She sat over him, looking down at his half-lidded eyes. He was contented and trusted her completely. In that moment she could have done anything to him and he would have thanked her for it. The release teased at her body, promising her that it was right there and but she wasn’t able to take it.

Will finally noticed her hesitation. She still sat over him as his hands stroked inward from her waist and her hips over her stomach and then upward. His hands found her breasts and he rolled her nipples between her fingers hard enough to skirt that pain line again and her hesitation disappeared into the need. His hands were still on her and she leaned over him. There was no grace to the way her hips moved against his. That point of contact between herself and his stomach tore another cry out of her and she didn't manage to catch herself before she collapsed onto his chest.

He tried to thrust from below her but it didn't quite work so he grasped her hips and guided her body of his. Shuddering and incoherent she arched her back and let him have that control. He held tight and moved her body against his own. Lifting her hips and then pulling them back down while her fingers twisted in his hair and she made helpless noises against his chest. He came gasping and grabbing hard enough that she expected to find bruises on her waist the next morning. He said something low and in Welsh into her neck. S

he had been close to a second and when he stopped she started again, twisting her hips against him. He was still inside her but softening and she hoped that this wouldn't hurt him. She let the need take control and she twisted her hips hard to rub her body against his stomach until the shuddering took her. Will stepped in at the last moment and pushed that second orgasm into a third with his fingers in the right place. That third one was loud enough that he clamped his hand over her mouth. She pushed into him and pulled away from him simultaneously as the release shook her to the core.

She came back to herself cradled against his chest. Gentle. He was back to being so gentle but she knew she was missing time.

"Will?" she asked as he stroked her hair away from her face.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked.

"No," she said though she could feel the bruises coming in on her hips and back where his fingers had held on too tightly. The aches weren't something to be concerned about. She asked, "Did I faint?"

"Maybe a little," Will said. "I'm so sorry."

"I'm not sorry," Tessa said. Her voice didn't sound right to her own ears. Like she'd borrowed it from someone else. Someone throaty and sensual. "Do it again."

"You will faint again," he said which was true. Her entire body was lit up. The touch of his hand against her shoulder which was intended to comfort was like spark to kindling.

"I don't care," she said. "One more time."

Her mouth found his through instinct more than intention. On her order his hand slid down but he was so gentle that it was almost torture. She was on her back and she didn't remember how she got there. Her thighs were spread wide and his fingers moved over her. Her entire body was connected to that point and every other thing made her stomach clench or her thighs press wider or her breathing shudder. His hair brushed her forehead and her entire body trembled.

She couldn't remember a time that her entire self had felt like this. Love set on fire. Bodies that couldn't be close enough. His lips closed on hers as his fingers teased at her. Coaxing her body toward what it wanted. She managed not to beg for a long time before she started whispering, "Please, please don't stop," into his kisses. He didn't increase the intensity. Her ability to think was still deeply clouded by want and desire and a physical need.

He was gentle. His fingers played over her, his hand smoothed over her breasts and her stomach but his hand between her legs was gentle. She was on the brink of it but he wouldn't push her over and she was too disoriented to do it herself. She was completely at his mercy. He held her there. On the very gentle wrong side of an orgasm she wanted more desperately with ever brushing finger tip.

Will was whispering soothing things into her ear but the words were lost when he stopped teasing and pushed her over the edge.

“Can we cancel everything else we have to do forever and just do that?” Will asked her.

“I don’t think I’d survive it,” she told him.

“Hmmm,” he said, “That would be a problem. Should we call down for breakfast?”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’m not ready to get up yet. Stay with me.”

“I’ve no where I’d rather be,” he said pulling her close. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is no intended plot for this but like First Three Days it may find itself growing as my Wessa feels need a dirty, dirty outlet sometimes.


	3. Chapter 3

Tessa wore only the chemise from her dress as she moved around the room. She trailed her fingers over the empty bookshelves and the empty mantle over the empty fireplace. It was warm enough that neither of them felt the need to rebuild the fire. Will had pushed the windows open and the room was lit by sunlight and smelled of spring.

This room was a blank slate. A blank slate with terrible wallpaper. It didn’t have their books in it yet. Nothing about it had been chosen by them. They would though. They would choose bedspreads and paintings. They would make this space their own. Will knew it was considered normal by many for a married couple to have separate chambers. In fact, there was a suite across the hall that was technically Tessa’s but he liked the idea of making a space together. She had been the one to get attached to the balcony and the bookshelves in this room. It was hers as much as it was his.

He watched her. She was slow and methodical, obviously thinking. The chemise covered her but was thin enough that it didn't really obscure much. She reached up to adjust a horrendous painting of a landscape that had been knocked askew when Will had thrown her corset at it. The line of her body was visible through the white fabric. He swallowed the desire down but let his eyes wander over her. She was barefoot which was almost more intimate than her state of undress. He couldn't say why but his attention kept being drawn back to narrow ankles and the flare of her calves as the disappeared beneath the fabric of the nightgown.

"You're staring," she said.

"I'm allowed, I've got it in writing," he said. "I had it written into the marriage certificate specifically."

"It's almost indecent," she said.

"Unlike everything else we've done this morning," he said. He tried for a serious voice but he was fairly certain his expression crossed the line from admiring to leering at just the thought of what they'd been doing before. He was indecent but the comment made her smile as though she was also thinking those same indecent thoughts. He could spend his lifetime making her smile.

"I'm starving but I don't want to call the maid," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"There's a spell on this morning," she said walking towards him. The rest of the world got indistinct when she turned her full attention on him. It had been a problem almost since he met her but it had become almost painful in the months of their engagement. The wanting swallowed his thoughts whole sometimes. She was saying, "I'm afraid of breaking it. I don't want to talk to other people."

"You stay here, I will go find food," he said pushing himself out of the chair he had been lounging in. He hadn't put on anything but the trousers from the night before. Tessa had finished crossing the room and put her hands on his bare chest. He reevaluated whether he really needed to eat to survive or if it was just a myth told to children.

"Brave hunter," she teased.

"Perhaps I should learn to hunt, like an American outdoorsman. I have a wife to provide for now," he said and her faux serious expression shattered into a smile and he leaned down to kiss her. He had learned the basics of hunting with his father as a child but had never really cared for it. Demon hunting had a purpose, fox hunts were just a game of ripping apart animals. He had overheard his mother say that he was too kind and gentle at 10 for fox hunts. She had been right. He had taken objection to it regardless and stomached the fox hunts because he wanted to be tough like his father.

"You're going to give up hunting demons so we can move to the Western Frontier and you can trap rabbits and hunt buffalo?" she asked.

"I could become a cowboy from a penny dreadful," he kissed her again, "I could chase down outlaws and keep prairie towns safe." She laughed into his mouth and he entirely forgot what he'd been planning to do.

"You would look good in one of those hats," she told him. Each sentence was punctuated with little glancing kisses. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer and kissed her deeply. Her arms were around his neck and she kissed him back. Every time she did this, his heart expanded. She gave him back as much love as he gave her and it was incredible. He wasn't sure his heart would still fit in his chest if it kept this up.

"You'll need a shirt," she said when she pulled back. He could feel every part of her body through her lack of clothing and he was momentarily confused.

"To be a cowboy?" he asked.

"No, well, yes. I suppose, yes you would, but you promised be breakfast and you'll need a shirt before you go find Jenny," she said. "You might make Jenny faint if she saw you like this. She sometimes looks like she's fit to faint just because you asked her something."

Jenny was Sophie’s replacement and she still felt like a stranger in the household though she’d been with the London Institute for months. Blonde, narrow boned, fully trained at the Edinburgh Institute. She was a good maid but Will knew that Tessa missed Sophie. They’d been friends. Jenny was staff. It wasn’t the same and Jenny was incapable of looking directly at Will which made every conversation he had with her uncomfortable.

"It's because I am exceptionally handsome," he said.

"You are," she said touching his face with a soft smile on her face. "But you're mine now and I'd be most upset if you went about seducing the new staff."

“Can I seduce the old staff?” he asked.

“William!” she said mock glaring at him. He grinned and pulled her even closer so he could press his face into the curve of her neck and whisper against her skin.

“I don’t want to seduce the new staff, or the old staff, or anyone who isn’t you. You do know that. Tell me you know that Tess. I don’t want anyone who isn’t you. I never will,” he had been joking when he’d started but suddenly he was worried. Worried that the reputation he’d cultivated had been too well built. Worried that she might doubt him.

“I know,” she said and he could feel her lips on his hair. He relaxed into her. Not the passionate embrace of the kiss, not the clinging anxiety that he was going to ruin this, he just held her close.

“Besides, Bridget wouldn’t put up with it. I’d find you stuffed in an oven,” she said laughing and pushing him away to go find Jenny.

Will found a shirt in the wardrobe and went to ring for the maid. She brought a tray of food up to the room and carefully arranged it on the little table in the sitting area. Will patiently waited for her to leave. He even managed to avoid tapping his foot or pushing her out the door when she turned to ask, again, if there was anything else they needed.

This was why people went on honeymoons immediately, Will decided. Because otherwise they killed the members of their household who got in the way of going back to bed. 

Will closed the door on her as politely as he could. Jenny was still new and Will didn't want to start off on the wrong foot with her but he really wanted her gone. She smiled at him without actually looking at him. He had used his appearance as a weapon in the days before the curse had been lifted. It had been a tool in his efforts to push people away. He’d learned to be a beautiful monster. Now he found himself unsettled each time he was reminded that he could make some people uncomfortable just by looking at them. He wasn't sure how to navigate that yet.

He picked up the tray and pushed his way back into the other room. Tessa sat in the middle of the bed. If he was surprised by the fact that he could make Jenny blush just by making eye contact it was nothing compared to his bafflement that anyone could get anything done with Tessa in the room. Her one knee was tucked up underneath her but the other was stretched out on the mattress and wasn't covered by her chemise. She was brushing out her hair and didn't notice him for a moment. Her eyes were shut and her head tilted to the side as she ran the brush through the curtain of hair.

Will balanced the tray on the little table by the side of the bed where they didn't stack candles and books yet but they would. She kept brushing but her face lit up when she saw him. He climbed up beside her. She blushed and tucked her bare leg up under her body.

These flashes of shyness reminded him that she was just a girl. They were far too young to be getting married and taking over an institute. Someone was going to notice and send them back to their governesses while reminding them to stop pretending to be adults before they were ready.

By tilting her head, Tessa left the long line of her throat exposed and when he was close enough he kissed her there. She startled just a bit and he pulled away instead of pushing higher as he'd intended. Her face was unreadable but her eyes were big and trained on him.

"You always look at me," he said. "You see me in a way that no one else ever has."

"That's unfortunate," she said leaning in to kiss the side of his throat as he had done to her. His skin shuddered of its own accord and he understood the little startled jump he'd gotten from her a moment before. She kept talking but he was only half listening because she was kissing him again as she said, "Everyone else must live in such poverty to never see you like this."

"I could put on exhibitions, if you'd like," he murmured.

"I'd like it if you would pass me a cup of tea," she said pulling away from his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. He'd been paying attention over the months of their engagement and he had amassed a list of things she liked including exactly how she took her tea. He leaned back against the headboard and she cuddled in beside him with the tea cup held between both hands.

They ate in near silence and the longer they sat together the more Tessa's shyness evaporated like dew in sunlight. Her head rested against his shoulder. Her knee was crossed over his even though it made the chemise slide up to expose a lot of skin. She didn’t seem to notice that she was bare almost to her hip.

He passed her bits of food so she didn't have to move. He was breaking up her pieces of toast when she stopped taking them with her hands and just took it out of his fingers with her mouth. Soft lips brushed his fingers and he forgot how to breathe.

It must have been on his face because she smiled at him. She jostled him just a little with her shoulder and tilted her chin up. Her mouth was open and smiling and he kissed her before continuing to feed her breakfast piece by piece. She licked crumbs off his fingers and he groaned very softly.

If he hadn't had the idea to start inviting her take things out of his mouth, they might have finished the tray. It was a bit of pear that finally pushed them over the edge. Tessa had been laughing and Will had been smiling so hard it was hard to chew. She dropped the fruit giggling at him and it landed in her lap. He caught her hands before she could pick it up and leaned down to retrieve it.

"Will!" she said as she squirmed out of his grasp. He had to press his face into her thigh in order to get it back and when he looked up at her the giggles had become a warmer deeper smile. In wrestling for control of her hands she'd thrown a leg over his lap and the chemise was hiked up so high, she was nearly undressed. Will watched her face as he trailed fingers up her leg. When he got to the hem, he paused and she nodded her encouragement. She lifted her hips so he could pull it up and then over her head.

"You're blushing," he told her. She blushed from her cheeks, down her throat and across her chest. He brushed his fingers over the pink skin and her cheeks darkened.

"Can I ask a question?" she said.

"Never again, I had that written into the marriage certificate too, no more questions," he told her. She frowned at him. He was still tracing very gentle lines over her chest, across her stomach, down her thighs but he paused to put his thumb on her chin and tilt her face down to look her right in the eyes when he said, "You can ask my anything, always,"

She blushed harder and he bit back the curiosity and waited. She would ask. She couldn't help it. He didn't need to push her. He waited and watched her. Fragile and strong. Confident enough to lay below him without hiding or turning away, shy enough to blush when he looked at her. Blue and gray. Girl and woman. Shadowhunter and Warlock. Nothing about her was simple but everything about her was beautiful.

"Ask me," he prompted.

She bit her lip before asking, "Do you decide when it does that?" He had no idea what she was talking about until she put a hand on his stomach and slid it lower. He was still fully dressed which suddenly seemed like the stupidest possible thing to be.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he lied, "Show me?"

He should have known better than to challenge her. She pushed him back and once he was sitting up her fingers were on the buttons of his shirt. He ran his hand down her back while she undid each button. For months, each little bit of skin had been a secret and a mystery. Her wrists beneath cuffs, her collar bone below lace, her throat wrapped in a scarf. How many hours had he spent considering each piece of skin hidden beneath clothing. Now she sat before him, comfortable and smiling, wearing nothing but her necklace and her cascade of hair.

Once he was as naked as she was he said, "Oh, that, no, that's not a thing I decide, I think it might be your fault."

"My fault?" she asked.

"You touch me and it just happens," he said leaned his face into her hair which fell in waves brushed but still holding twists and kinks from the style it had been pulled into the night before. "Sometimes I think about you and it just happens." He pushed his face a little deeper into her hair as he said it. It had happened. No one had ever noticed but it was still embarrassing to have to stay sitting at the library table or drop the book he had been reading onto his lap and start a conversation with whomever was nearby until it went away.

"Truly?" she asked and he nodded silently.

"I suppose it doesn't happen to you," he said.

"Different.... parts," she said. "Though I think I can imagine the kind of thoughts that might make it happen."

"Ladies aren't supposed to have those kinds of thoughts," Will told her pulling back from her hair.

"Then maybe I don't want to be a lady," she said. She never questioned that they might have had the same sorts of thoughts. His mind supplied the unwanted question, "Did she ever think them about Jem?" and Will's heart hurt. It wasn’t imagining Tessa’s thoughts that hurt. It was Jem. Jem would not have this. Not with her, not with anyone. No one would ever press a warm shoulder into Jem's chest and laugh against his skin. That wasn't fair or right.

Tessa pulled him back to the moment. She was still blushing she met his eye and smiled as her hand moved. While they had talked she had left it curled around his hip much as his hand sat at the dip at her waist. Her fingers found him and he gasped. Just fingertips. Glancing, gentle, curious. How the girl manage to ask questions with her fingertips was not something Will could explain.

"Higher or lower?" she asked just as he'd asked her the night before.

"Lower and tighter," he said taking her hand. She let him wrap her fingers around him and for a few strokes he guided her hand to show her what he meant.

"Like that?" she asked and his answer was a not quite coherent groan as he leaned his face back into her hair and tightened his fingers on her hip. The skin of her hands was so much softer than his and she was still curious and gentle. He'd always felt a little like he was doing something wrong when he did this himself. Abusing oneself they called it. She had none of his guilt about it, her hands were slow. Hands. One stroking slowly up and down the entire length of him, while the other one was on his stomach, on his thigh, lower. He gasped again.

"That's a good sound, right?" her voice was right in his ear.

"That's good, yes," he said and she took his previous request of tighter literally and, "Tess," escaped from him. Her name became an expletive or maybe it was a prayer. He hooked a hand under her knee, pulled her down and rolled her over in one motion. Her hands didn't leave him but they lost that even rhythm that had been chipping away at his self control.

"Will it hurt you?" he asked and she shook her head no. He guided her hands away and they started to wander up his chest as she spread her knees for him. His hand still lingered on her waist and he felt the way her hips shifted to meet him as he pressed himself down against her and then into her. It was as easy as the kiss that followed. She still tasted like pears and red currant jam.

Her hands were everywhere. There shouldn't have been enough of her to surround his entire body like this. He drowned in the sensations of her. The smell of her hair, the texture of her thighs where they touched his, the little sounds she made in the back of her throat when she liked something. He kissed her and the movements of his body were an extension of that. They were stiller than they had been before. Hips shifting together not stroking or thrusting.

"I don't deserve you," he told her in the middle of it when every wall he'd ever constructed between his emotions and the world lay crumbled at her feet. She stilled beneath him. He hadn't realized how much she moved with him until she stopped. Her hands found his face. Some piece of the Will he had spent so many years creating scrambled to rebuild the wall between his vulnerability and the truth. It was hopeless. He couldn't find anything that might keep her out. He stopped fighting it and let her see it.

"Yes you do," she said. "You deserve the world, Will."

He started to protest and she shook her head and he fell silent. In that instant, pressed together, he would have done anything for her. Anything at all. She kissed him. They were so close she barely needed to raise her face to do it.

"But this isn't about being deserving, William," she said and as he could in rare flashes, he heard Jem in her voice, "Don't make the world a game. It isn't that simple. We don't earn our lives. We create them. I love you. I want to be with you. I don't care what the world thinks we deserve. I care what you want. I care what I want. I want you."

"I want you too," he said and he kissed her again. Her hands in his hair held him close as he moved against her again.

Release took him first but he couldn't pull away from her even as his body shuddered and protested. She arched into him so soon after that it was almost the same sensation. She twisted her hips just enough that his over sensitive skin brought him gasping with her. He pulled back but rested his head against her chest. He lay between her thighs but no longer inside her. Their hands still moved over skin while their breathing settled.

"We create our lives," Will said.

"Together," Tessa said.

 


	4. The Library

Will did not enjoy not being good at things and he was not particularly good at running the Institute. Technically, it was Charlotte's for another two months but there were meetings he needed to be at before he and Tessa could leave for their honeymoon. Each day he discovered new oceans of knowledge that he didn't have. The exact treaties with the werewolves that governed London's east end were only the most recent thing that he had had to look to Charlotte to fill in his missing knowledge.

He spent evenings reading up on the agreements beyond the Accords. He spent afternoons pestering Charlotte to explain how exactly one answered a royal invite from the Faeries without being rude and how to tell from the stationery whether it was an invite from the Seelie Court or the Unseelie. He had thought he knew so much. He'd spent his 5 years with the Nephilim learning everything he could but it wasn't nearly enough. Not yet.

Tessa kept him sane. She sat with him and asked the questions he needed to hear. She read through things before he did and told him which parts he could skip. She was learning as much as he was and unlike him, she knew when to snap a book shut and stop.

"You're not going to remember it if you start on the next one now," she said, "I don't care about the memosyne rune, you are not going to be able tell these cases apart later if you don't stop for a few minutes."

"How does Charlotte remember all of this?" he asked waving a hand at the collection of papers spread across the table in the library.

"I suspect she doesn't," Tessa said, "She looks things up as she needs to know them. You're not the Inquisitor or one of his lawyers, and even they don't need to know everything all at once."

"The Shadowhunters still think I'm a mad drunk," Will said tossing a book across the desk. "And they've got a higher opinion of me than most of Downworld does. I can't afford to be stupid as well."

He didn't say things like that when there were other people around but they had the library to themselves. The Lightwoods had taken the patrols that evening and Charlotte and Henry were off ensconced in the nursery with baby Charles. The maids had brought them tea after dinner and then hurried away while Will glowered at papers and Tessa made gentle apologies for him.

"Then you can't afford to exhaust yourself and forget everything you already know," she said.

"Then what do you suggest?" he asked.

"Lock the door," she said in an even voice stacking up a pile of complaints that had been submitted to the Institute over the past six months.

"What did you say?" he asked.

This time he got a little half smile and sideways glance. She hesitated a moment and bit her lip before repeating herself, "Lock the door. I'm going to distract you."

He turned to look at her and she held her lower lip between her teeth while her smile widened. She was the picture of respectable. Her hair was done neatly and she wore the gray striped dress she'd worn the day he'd told her about the curse. She even wore gloves because one of the boxes of reports they'd pulled down was old enough that its contents couldn't be touched with bare fingers. Perfectly respectable except for her teeth sinking into her lip and the look in her eyes.

He considered protesting for a split second before getting up and swinging the door shut and throwing the lock. No one would be back to check on them for hours but he still wanted the lock between everyone else and that look. He came back to the table. She hadn't gotten up so he sunk back down into the chair beside her. Whatever was in the papers was suddenly distant and uninteresting. She was taking the pins out of her careful hair style. Slowly.

"What are you doing?" he asked smiling.

"You can't so much as kiss me without knocking my hair loose," she said.

"And you're intending more than kissing?" he asked and his voice hitched. He swallowed. He was frozen, watching her careful fingers remove pins and pile them on the table as locks of her hair fell loose around her face. He reached out and touched one of the free pieces, running it between his fingers as she freed the rest of it.

She shook her head a little once it all hung down around her and he pushed more of it back from her face but didn't touch more than her hair. She considered him as though trying to decide something important. He waited for her to tell him what she intended.

"As long as you're head of the Institute, this is our library," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"There's a window seat on the second floor, back behind all the demon language dictionaries," she said. "It's bigger than the ones down here."

His answer wasn't a word, it was a noise that began in the pit of his stomach and died in his throat. He didn't trust his voice. She'd thought about this. Thought about this in detail. She'd chosen a place. The window on that side overlooked an empty courtyard. They'd be invisible even if someone walked below them. They'd be too high to be seen and with the door shut the library was a private kingdom.

"If you want to," she said taking his extended silence as hesitation. He saw the teasing confidence falter.

"I more than want to," he said and both the confidence and the smile came back, she stood up. He'd been leaning in, sitting at the edge of his chair in an attempt to be just a little closer to her. When she looked down at him, her skirts were pressed against his knees and he had to look up the line of her very carefully dressed body to see her face.

She'd worn that dress the day she'd broken his heart into shards he hadn't thought could ever be repaired. When he remembered that day now, he remembered the sad smile and the promise that people loved him and the way she had never really said that she didn't. Every time she turned those big gray eyes, which looked so blue against the dress, on him the cracks healed. He'd loved her and lost her and doubted that she could ever love him the way he loved her. The doubt was gone. Day by day, she kept washing it farther out to sea.

"Come with me," she said holding out her still gloved hands.

He took a moment to pull them off, moving as slowly as she had with the hair pins. He rubbed his fingers along the sensitive skin at her wrists until her breathing changed then he pulled the glove off and ran his hands over hers. She never looked away from him. He couldn't imagine he'd ever doubted that she loved him. He couldn't imagine a time when she hadn't looked at him like that. Once her hands were bare, he took them and stood just as slowly. Her eyes followed him up until he stood taller than her and she needed to raise her chin to hold his gaze.

She ran her tongue over her lip but neither of them moved to complete the promise of the kiss. She stepped back and pulled him towards the stairs and the suddenly very intriguing prospect of Purgatic dictionaries. The aisles at the top of the stairs were narrow. Downstairs aesthetic choices had been made: books in cases and broad shelves to show volumes to their best advantage. Upstairs, the bookshelves had been rearranged time and time again over the years to fit more in. Each shelf was tight packed. She wove through them, knowing exactly where she was going because it was a library and of course Tessa had walked every aisle.

He let her lead. They could have cut through the German folk tales but she took them on a longer route past Faerie lore and then Shadowhunter histories. He put his hands on her waist and stopped her. She stepped back into him with a gasp as though he'd burned her. He pulled her closer and her breathing was ragged. Anticipation ran through them both like lightning.

"This one has an excellent bit on the spread of the first vampires," he said lifting a book off the shelf. It was a heavy, leather bound translation of a German volume. It had the Clave seal stamped in gold on the spine. Tessa leaned her shoulders into his chest and he craned his neck over her shoulder so his cheek brushed hers. It pulled another gasping breath out of her as though he were touching her much more intimately than he truly was.

"Can I read it later?" she asked him. His cheek was against hers and he could just barely see her cast a glance at him out of the side of her eye.

"Do you have something else do be doing right now?" he asked and his voice wasn't nearly as nonchalant as he wanted it to be. It was hard to tease someone when you wanted what they were offering more than you wanted to breathe.

"My husband is wearing too many clothes," she said, "Something needs to be done before I take time to read. It's very important."

"It is very important," he agreed. Her laugh was as unsteady as her voice had been but it was deep and happy. He had his hands spread across her waist and even through the dress and the corset and everything else she wore he could feel the way her whole body laughed. He felt like very party he'd ever attended had had at least one group of tittering girls, laughing at jokes they didn't think were funny because they wanted someone to like them.

He wasn't sure Tessa had ever laughed like that in her life. When she laughed, she meant it. From the tips of her toes through to the the little crinkle at the bridge of her nose, she laughed with every part of her. He held her just a little longer to feel that laughter before releasing her so she could go back to leading him to where she wanted him.

Tessa climbed up on the window seat on her knees to look out at the courtyard below. It seemed to make her nervous so Will pulled the curtains shut. It was dark out but even still the light from the window had given the space more illumination than it had now. The tight labyrinth of bookshelves blocked most of the light from the central part of the library and the little witchlight sconces here were turned low when no one used the space.

Tessa turned to him, still kneeling and she was a patchwork of shadows. He could see her lips and her eye clearly but the other side of her face was hidden. She tilted her head up to him and he lost her eyes to the shadows completely until he got close enough. He tried to hold the moment before the first kiss but she pulled him the rest of the way in. She met his anticipation with a desire that burned hot.

His first instinct, to push her down with a kiss and a hand on her hip like he did when he took her to bed didn't work in such a narrow space. He ended up pushing her back against the curtains and the window behind. A larger window seat was not a bed. She was still kneeling but there wasn't space for him on the bench at that angle.

"I have plans for you, Mr. Herondale," she said pushing him back just enough to whisper against his lips.

"Anything you want," he told her, "Anything at all."

"Sit down," she said.

He pulled away from her and sat down, feet flat on the floor, hands folded in his lap. They didn't stay there. He could stop himself from reaching for her.

She didn't wear a crinoline or a bustle to sit and read papers in the library but even still when she climbed into his lap, her skirts took up a lot of space. They pushed high in an ocean of fabric around them. He felt her knees on either side of his thighs. He pushed skirts out of the way until his hands found her legs, still too many clothes to find skin but he pushed his hands higher and her mouth was partly open. She leaned down to kiss him. He used his hands on her knees to pull her closer and she braced her hands on his shoulders. 

Will brought his hand up to hold her waist and then slid it around to start undoing buttons. He had ceased to care where they were only that she was there. She grabbed his fingers and wrapped hers around them. Her skin was hot or maybe his was. He made a little frustrated noise at being stopped but looked up at her and waited for her explanation.

"I can't get this dress back on by myself," she said. "You are useless for helping with that and you know it. Don't take it off."

"How?" he asked and the surprise was all over her face. Their eyes locked for a long moment and she glanced around them and he remembered that they were in the library. The door was locked but this was still the library. She bit her lip again and settled a little tighter to him. Why was there so much clothing?

She made a decision, he saw it cross her face. She leaned in to whisper into his ear, "Carefully," before she untucked his shirt and ran her hands along the skin underneath. He swallowed hard. He'd thought the lack of crinoline had been for comfort now he was imagining her planning this all day and it made his mouth go dry and his breath come harder.

She read his expression and her face broke into a wide smile. She gathered his face in her hands and tilted it up. He had stumble on his jaw he wasn't aware of until her palms ran along it. Sitting over him, she was taller, and so it was her who had to bend to kiss him. He kissed her back with just a little desperation. He was painfully hard and everything else she'd done had been so slow. Anticipation burned and rattled through him. He couldn't look at anything that wasn't her face.

Tessa had to stand to shimmy her way out of the undergarments beneath the dress and he slid forward to keep his hands on her as she did. He attempted to help but felt mostly that his clumsy, needy hands were getting in her way. Petticoats and a pair of drawers dropped to the floor in a pile of white linen.

Her kisses were little promises each time she leaned down to meet his partially open mouth. He couldn't close it. He tried and then some expression on her face or a brush of fabric would pull another gasp from him. She was just as slow with this process of half undressing as she had been with her hair and he wanted to beg. He wanted to give up on her plans and push her down onto the floor. He was sure it was on his face.

"Maybe we should stop and read up on the spread of vampirism," she said when he was pretty sure she was out of undergarments. She bent at the waist and her face was very close to his. She was all confidence and her teasing didn't come out as shaky as his had.

"I'm sure it's memorized," he said. "I could tell you about it but not with my clothes on, very special rune. Doesn't work when fully dressed."

She laughed again but her fingers were on his buttons. She undid them and ran her fingers down his bare chest but didn't take it off. He still wore his open jacket, open waistcoat and open shirt. She kissed a line down bare skin and then met his eyes and started on his pants. Those he kicked off and when they got caught on his shoes he pried those off too without unlacing them.

He couldn't remember how to form words. When she climbed back into his lap to kiss him, he felt her bare thighs against his and groaned. She looked fully dressed when he opened his eyes to take her in. The dress wasn't even pulled askew. He ran his fingers through her hair and looked at her like she was the entire world.

She kissed him as she reached down through the tangle of her skirt to position him in the right place. She slid onto him still looking almost exactly as she had when she'd sat beside him at the meeting that afternoon. He'd never be able to disconnect the sensation and the image. He'd have to ask her to never wear this dress in public again. He'd certainly no longer remember it as the dress she'd broken his heart in.

Her mouth fell open in a silent gasp as it always did when he entered her. Will gathered her hair in one hand, wrapping it around his wrist before his palm found her neck. He was pulling just a little and it tilted her head back, leaving her throat exposed. His mouth closed on the skin above the collar and he grazed teeth across it. Her reaction started with tightening muscles deep inside her and he groaned louder against her skin and undid the first couple buttons so he could kiss the entire line of her throat from collarbone to jawline.

She moved slow and tantalizing, just rising and falling on him as her thighs tightened and released. He pressed his face to her fully clothed shoulder and held her waist, letting her set this maddeningly slow rise and fall rhythm. It was too much and not enough.

"Please, Tess," he finally begged her. "Harder, please."

She didn't answer him with words. She was holding his head close to her neck as he kissed and sucked along the skin there. She spread her knees wider and sank all the way onto him. They both gasped. He knew this was uncomfortable for her but she didn't stop. She moved from her hips. Their bodies were locked together and he wrapped his arms all the way around her and was surprised to realize he was whispering her name over and over against her throat.

She moved slowly still but the deepness made up for it. She cried out softly though nothing he had done had changed and her intensity changed. The slowness was gone. She rocked against him hard and he knew he was holding her too tight. Her head was pulled back by the fist he'd made in her hair and he found the focus to force those fingers to loosen. They closed again on the bodice of her dress, squeezing soft flesh through the unyielding corset. He wanted to strip off the rest of her clothes and hold her breasts in his hands but he could barely remember how to sit up straight let alone how buttons and lacing worked.

She cried out again and he found her face. Her cheeks were red, her mouth was open, he'd left marks down her throat, her collar was askew and each time she rocked into him her expression tightened in a look that was almost pain. He hadn't hurt her but she was close to her release. He was learning to see it. He was learning to coax it out of her. He was learning the difference between coaxing it out of her and bringing her over that edge hard.

His clumsy fingers fought their way through all the fabric of the skirt to find the place where their bodies joined so that he could push her over that edge. It was going to be hard. The coaxing was over for the evening. She screamed. It wasn't a gasp or a cry, it was a scream and she pressed her face into the bare skin of his chest to try and bury it as she fell apart in his arms. If he'd let go, she would have fallen to the floor.

He had thought he was closer than she was but he was still hard and needy beneath her. He held her without more than a few unconscious shifts of his hips. She whimpered into his shoulder with each one and wrapped her arms more tightly around him. He listened. Listened for someone running to help the screaming girl in the library but there was no sound. She’d probably sent everyone off on some errand to keep them far away.

He lifted her and she cried out again. He'd planned to turn her around and lie her out on the bench to finish but he wasn't coordinated enough for that. He barely managed to avoid dumping her onto the floor. He laid her down in a motion that didn't hurt her but hardly counted as graceful. She lay below him against the library carpet. She no longer looked neat. Her face was flushed and she breathed hard. Her hair was spread around them. Her eyes were wide and intense.

"Was this your plan?" he asked her.

"Just about, yes," she told him in a gasping voice.

He leaned down over her and pushed the blasted skirt out of the way to enter her again. She cried out at just that and her fingers tightened. One of her hands was in the shirt front hanging open over her, the other was in his hair. He might have had ideas about gentleness and taking his time but he didn't have the control for it.

He pressed himself as close to her as he could, turned her face to his for a kiss and used his hips to push as deeply into her as he could manage. She whimpered and murmured and stroked his chest until he brought another scream from her. Gentle fingers became nails that raked a line down his chest as though seeking something to hold onto.

He came as hard as she did and the noise he made was deeper but still far closer to a scream than anything else. Their eyes locked as they both tried to find the ability to breathe after. The floor was hard so he pulled her up and leaned back in the window seat with her tucked into his side. She was breathing evenly but more deeply than normal as she settled into his chest.

“Are you distracted?” she asked him.

“No, I’m very focused. I am focused on you and this piece of skin here,” his fingers were behind her ear and she giggled just a little and tucked her face in tighter to his chest, “and this one,” he touched her ankle with a bare foot, “and this part here,” he ran his thumb along her lips and she answered him with a smile. She raised her head and he kissed her.

“I am never going to be able to look at you in this dress without thinking about this,” he said flattening the wrinkles out of it where it lay across his lap. He wasn’t entirely sure where his pants had gone.

“I like this dress,” she said. “I was going to wear it when we went to see your mother at Easter.”

“Don’t you dare do that to me,” he told her and she laughed. He kissed the little crinkle on her nose when she did. “It is going to be hard enough hosting Clave meetings in this room.”

“You’re too easily distracted,” she said.

“Shush,” he said. “I am nearly impossible to distract. You have the unfair advantage of being the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and impressively determined.”

“I hardly had to twist your arm to convince you,” she said.

“Not true, my honour has been utterly besmirched by your seduction,” he nuzzled her hair as he said it. “You’re leading me astray.”

“Where else could I lead you?” she asked and his imagination almost short circuited trying to think of answers to that. He pulled her in a little closer and kissed her again. Her smile was just a little bit wicked but it softened and deepened as he kissed her again.

“I’ll follow you anywhere,” he said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first wrote this I thought it was a little too public and a little too improper for Tessa (especially young Tessa) to plan but I don't think she was intending to go that far until Will met her suggestion with that kind of near-incoherent desire. They play off each other and crank one another up and her planned make out session suddenly becomes so much more than that. 
> 
> That said, I will argue forever that she's the sexually adventurous one in this relationship and Will probably spent their entire marriage happily getting himself seduced just on the edges of his comfort zone. 
> 
> But yeah, she really had chosen not to wear a crinoline because she knew that she was going to be sitting and reading for hours not because she had plans to get half naked and have semi-public sex. Will's imagination runs away with him just a little.


	5. Interrupted

Will woke Tessa up with his fingers in her hair. She felt them weave in and out as he pulled her braid loose. She blinked slowly awake and had a moment where she wasn’t quite sure where she was. When he was there in front of her, she always knew but this room was still unfamiliar enough and waking up beside another person still new enough that she had moments of confusion.

She had fallen asleep facing the window. He had curled around her like an extra blanket and it took her a moment to remember where she was without that weight at her back or his face in front of her. He gathered her hair up in his hands and she smiled. The disorientation only lasted a moment. She tilted her head to make it easier for him to pull all her hair into one bundle.

“Awake?” he asked in a very soft voice.

She nodded, “Is it time to dress yet? I don’t want to go to the meeting.”

“Nor do I, it’s early, we’ve got,” he paused and she felt him shift to see the clock, “better than an hour, the sun has only just risen.”

She murmured something that wasn’t quite words but she hoped communicated that she was pleased with that situation. He was still playing with her hair and the part of her brain that wasn’t half asleep and lulled into a warm cozy stupor by his presence was telling her that it would be in knots by the time the maid tried to brush it out for breakfast.

She rolled over and cuddled into his chest. She could have gone back to sleep but they had an hour wherein no one would be bothering them. No one would be bringing things to be signed or approved. No one would be expecting them to arrive looking respectable. They were completely alone for just a little while and she wasn’t going to waste it. The happy little noise she made wasn’t quite words.

He needed to shave and she could feel the evidence of it on her forehead where it was tucked in just under his jaw. She kissed his throat and then worked her way up in a very slow line from his collar to his ear. He laughed, a deep warm sound that wasn’t so much humour as happiness. She smiled back as she followed the same path back down.

He lay back with a smile on his face and she was struck by a moment of marvel that she could make him this happy so easily. She had done nothing and he looked at her like the only star in the sky. He helped her take his shirt off so she could continue the path of gentle kisses down across his shoulder and then his chest. Her hand was on his stomach and as she kissed past his nipple, she felt the little flash of reaction as his muscles pulled tight for a moment. She paused to look up at him and he was watching her with half lidded eyes and a lazy smile.

She did it again and as his eyes widened so did the smile. His chest was hard and smooth under her hands. She licked his skin which pulled another soft edged reaction from his expression and the nipple tightened. She did it again, running her tongue over the tightened skin in a long gentle movement like a cat lapping at cream. Fascinated by the reaction, she shifted so she could run her fingers over the same skin.

“Are you teasing?” he asked.

“I’m only exploring,” she said.

Moving across his body, she tried again on the other one until it had hardened as well. Then, because he had done it to her before, she pulled it into her mouth and sucked. He groaned and when she did the same thing on the other one he groaned a little louder. Her cozy lethargy hadn’t cleared, if anything it was worse now. She was lost in a haze of desire that turned the world to soft edges.

When she pulled back a little to take the time to decide what she wanted to do next he grabbed her around the waist and rolled her over onto her back. It was fast and hard and shocked her out of some of the haze.

“Will?” she said looking at him with wide eyes. Her hands were still where they had been on his chest before the roll. His lower body pinned hers and he was heavy. She shifted and could feel him hard and ready through her night dress.

“How long could you do that?” he asked.

“We’ve got a hour,” she said, “I thought we could do something good with it.”

“You’re driving me mad, is it maddening when I do that to you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He laughed and settled in against her. She spread her knees and adjusted her hips so when he gathered her to him they were in a position that would have allowed him to enter her easily if it weren’t for all the clothing. The nearness of him eased her back into the cozy haze as she relaxed below him and cuddled as close as she could get him.

He made a little noise that was more frustration than the contentment she was feeling and she turned his face to look at him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There are too many things between us,” he said.

“So take them off,” she told him and she could hear the difference in their voices. His was full of the desire that became a need while hers was calm and content. She would have been happy to lay in bed and run her fingers over his skin until it was time to get up. He very obviously wanted more than that.

She helped pull the pieces of pajamas away when he fumbled. Her hands wandered the entire time. Up the muscles of his arms and then down his back. They found his waist and once his pants were gone they found his thighs as well.

“Roll over,” she said when it was done. The impatience flared on his face for a moment and she pulled his face down to kiss him on the mouth. He dropped his head in defeat and answered her kiss with more force. He rolled onto his back and she straddled his waist but didn’t begin yet. The look on his face was anticipation and where he put his hands on her hips she could feel the self control it took him to keep his need in check.

It was written on his face how much he wanted to take control and decide how fast and hard it happened. Tessa was certain that if she refused him he’d accept it but she hadn’t done it yet. She wanted him close enough to touch and what he wanted would answer her need as much as his. She was only going to slow him down enough that she could enjoy having him close.

She leaned down and kissed him gently and slowly again. She kissed him deep and slow as his fingers tightened on her thighs as he shifted his hips against nothing.

“We’ve got lots of time,” she said.

“I don’t care,” he said.

She laughed soft and happy. He could have flipped her over and taken what he wanted and she could see that option cross his face as she pulled away from the kiss. Instead he released her legs and pulled her down to return the favour she had given him earlier. He pulled her nipple into his mouth and sucked on the skin until she cried out. He rolled it between his fingers as his mouth moved to the other and she gasped out his name.

Their desire had taken two very different forms but it was equally matched. When she slid into place on him the shudder went through both of them. She had been slow and gentle but not slow enough to be as ready as she usually was. Her body stretched and it was nearly pain. His attention was on the breast he’d pulled back into his mouth and she forced any hurt down out of her expression before he looked at her.

She rocked, slow and gentle and now that he had her where he had wanted her he responded in kind. He pulled her down against his chest and ran his hands over her as she tried to find a rhythm and a stroke that didn’t hurt. He was whispering soft things that she couldn’t quite understand in her ear as her body caught up to her desires. The too tight feeling retreated bit by bit and she cuddled into his chest as she rocked her hips against him.

His hands ran patterns from her throat down to where their bodies were pressed together and then back up. Calloused fingers brushed over the too sensitive skin of her breasts and grabbed at her hips to pull them in tighter and make her gasp with that near pain again. His mouth was on her skin and the stubble on his jaw scratched just a little as he kissed her lips, her neck, her hands, whichever part of her he could reach.

He pulled her against him and then released her to slide away again before pulling her down. The pleasure, the near pain, the scratch of his jaw against her cheek and the way his fingers stroked her nipples all wove together into one sensation that swallowed her whole. She held onto him and let it wash through her and erase every worry.

He stopped and rolled her onto her back before either of them were finished. She protested with a little unhappy noise he swallowed in a kiss. Running on instinct and need she’d settled onto her back with her knees wide. It was his turn to laugh. She was as fever pitch as he was now. Still, she wanted touch more than she wanted release.

“Not so patient now,” he said.

“Don’t pretend that you’re the patient one, I see straight through your lies,” she laughed.

They spoke in soft low voices, whispering against one another’s skin and with their mouths together so words became kisses and kisses became words. Will kept some distance between them as he regained his breath and his self control. She wanted him to come close again but was as unprepared for it to be over as he was. Her fingers kept getting lost in his hair as she held him in place to kiss.

The knock at the door came from another planet.

“Mr. Herondale?” the voice on the other side called. It was Cyril.

“Will! Wake up!” this was Charlotte’s voice and came with a knock that was better described as hammering.

“What do you want?” he said just loud enough for the exasperation in his voice to be heard. He had pushed himself up on his arms but his stomach still pressed against hers and kept her against the bed. 

“Attack down near Parliament, we need it sorted before the mundanes all wake up!” Charlotte said and Will dropped his face into the curve of Tessa’s throat and muttered the word “no” a few times in quick succession.

“Will?” Charlotte said again in that sharp voice she used when she was issuing orders. 

“I’ll meet you at the carriage,” Will said glowering at the door before looking back down at Tessa who looked back at him with her mouth still partly open and confusion in her eyes. He kissed her before he pulled away and ran his fingers through his hair a few times to try to clear his head. He sat up and looked down at her. Tessa was suddenly self conscious though they hadn't really been caught and even if they had been, they hadn't been doing anything wrong. She kept waiting for the day that being married to Will stopped feeling like an impossibility and started feeling like a fact of life. 

“Tomorrow morning we do not wake up at dawn, we wake up sometime before dawn, long before dawn,” he told her. “I suppose you’re coming on this little jaunt?”

She nodded but didn’t speak. The interruption had startled her and the pink in her cheeks was as much embarrassment as it was exertion. They dressed in silence and Will kissed her one more time before he led the way out the door and down towards the weapons room and the waiting carriage. Their day was not going to begin the way that they had intended it to.

  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story isn't going to have an external plot - by that I mean you won't find out what the attack at Parliament was, just as you won't find out why Will needed to write letters to faeries in the last chapter - it doesn't matter for the story, Shadowhunters live busy lives and there are always attacks and this story isn't about that.
> 
> VivacePhoenix and I share this headcanon that Will and Tessa like to wake up early in the mornings to read and cuddle and spend time together.


	6. Snow Storm

The snow was everywhere and it was still falling. Blankets of white that drifted and curled around buildings and winds that clawed and stung when you stepped outside. It might have been possible to make it home but it hardly seemed worth the risk. Will watched Tessa near the window frame in her thick wool dress. The coat and hats were gone as were the winter boots but there was still snow melt on the hem of the dress. It had to be cold.

"Come closer to the fire," he said and she crossed the room to drop herself down by the flames. They had a small private room in an inn. He reached out to touch her cheeks to make sure they weren't still chilled and she smiled at him. There had been food and wine downstairs and there was no reason for her to be cold now but he needed to be sure.

"You're fussing," she said.

"I dragged you out into a blizzard to see a man read a book. Now you're going to catch your death," Will said. The author's salon had been a wonderful evening but they'd stepped out of it into a storm far worse than they had been expecting. He knew his expression was worried and he was deeply annoyed with himself.

"I am not," she said, "I am perfectly fine."

He looked at her with a frown and she hooked her fingers into his tie to pull him in close enough to kiss. She stopped just before the kiss and waited until his expression softened and the frown fell away before she pressed her lips to his. Every kiss was magic and he melted into it. Gentle and slow but not chaste, not this one. Her fingers played through his still damp hair and he let her pull him in so they sat close together. Side by side and turned into each other.

"Maybe it is a little chilly," she said pulling back and looking serious, "Maybe we should go to bed early."

“Yes,” he said as seriously as he could manage around the spreading smile and the immediate warmth in his stomach that even the suggestion could bring.

She took her dress off carefully and hung it up. He helped her unlace her corset while nuzzling the back of her neck. He wasn't really watching what he was doing and kept tangling the strings but her head had rolled to the side to allow for the kisses on her neck and she didn't really care.

Once she was naked she turned to him to return the favour while he ran his hands over her skin. When he took his jacket off, she wrapped it around her own shoulders against the cold. Even close to the fire, winter couldn’t be kept completely at bay.

The firelight and the lamps created competing shadows over her body beneath the wool making the shape of her seem like a secret. It was deeply indecent, this naked woman in a very proper suit jacket that hung loose around her body and managed to shield without hiding anything. Beautifully indecent. She removed his tie and unbuttoned his shirt while he leaned towards her and stroked her breasts, her stomach, her hips. Smooth and soft and perfect under his hands.

He was struck sometimes by a feeling that those scarred hands of his with their faded runes and their old injuries and their built up callouses were not nearly good enough to touch her. When the thought crossed his mind this time, he stopped and flattened his palms to her waist so he held her in place. She looked up at him with a half smile on her lips and her fingers in the waistband of his pants where she had only just found the button. She paused.

"You love me," he said. He had wanted reassurance but that smile had been all the reassurance he needed. He said the words in a drawl with as smarmy a grin as he could manage on his face. He made it a joke to cover up his moment of insecurity.

"Oh no," she told him with absolute sincerity written on her face and her fingers moving again. There was something about her fingers against his stomach that made him shiver.

“No?” he asked still grinning.

"I am only here because you look so nice without a shirt on," she said placing a kiss on his chest.

"I think you're a liar," he said, "I think you love me. Everyone loves me, I'm very lovable."

"Are you really?" she asked and the faux-sincerity cracked into a smile, "And do I really? How would you know?"

He slipped his hands back into her hair and tilted her head up. She was still smiling but it wasn't as silly now. She wore a smile that was intimate as a touch. He didn't kiss her right away. That had been his intention but instead he stood with her caught between his hands and basked in that smile. Her hands were on his chest again, softer, smoother, gentler than his could ever be and he inhaled slowly before pulling her into the kiss.

He might have just held her there all night. It was the type of moment that you could lose yourself in. But she was naked and he was nearly so and Tessa was never one to stand placidly while she was kissed. Her arms looped up around his neck and her body was against his. She arched her back just a little to push her chest into his and that was the tipping point.

He pushed off the rest of his clothes and wrapped his arms around her and half lifted, half walked her backwards to the bed. She burrowed under the blankets and he followed her until they came to rest, naked and warm and smiling buried under thick blankets and pillows.

He had forgotten she was wearing his jacket. It was navy blue wool against the white of the sheets. Scratchy and still beautifully indecent wrapped around her.

His hand ran down her stomach and she adjusted her legs and her hips so he could run his fingers over more intimate places. They had only been married a few months but he had spent them paying careful attention. He could have made lists of things that she liked and things that she didn't. His fingers in just that spot while his mouth was against her throat was something that she liked.

He traced lines and patterns, teased with little flicks and changes in pressure that could make her gasp. His mouth was on her neck, just kisses at first and then he nibbled and sucked, pushing the coat out of the way to uncover more skin. Her head fell back. Her hands never left him and her hips shifted while she made gentle happy sounds that weren't quite words. It built slowly as he nuzzled and stroked and whispered love notes into her ear.

"Shhhh," he told her when it had built to the point that she twisted and moaned. He touched his nose to hers as he tilted her face down and covered her mouth with a hand. She looked at him with wide eyes. She wasn't alarmed, just surprised. He held her gaze while he rubbed hard enough to make her back arch and the hand on her mouth necessary to stop the cry that escaped. When it was over, he pulled her into his arms so she was settled against his chest as he laid back. When her breathing calmed she propped herself up on an elbow to look at him and he gave her that smarmy grin from before.

"I think you like me at the very least," he told her.

"I love you. I'd love you even if you couldn't do that but it doesn't hurt," she teased.

Will laughed and looked at her, her hair hadn't been taken down before he'd pushed her into bed and now it was knocked askew and coming out in tendrils. He touched her cheek and thought about what he wanted to do next. She made that decision for him by climbing up over him. She rarely did it and he almost always had to ask for it. It made her nervous to be the one in control so she didn’t often volunteer but he loved it. His smile broadened and his whole body reacted to her being there and she hadn’t even done anything yet.

He forced himself not to push or demand or take back the control. His hands found her thighs and stroked them from knee to hip as he watched her. His jacket hung down over her hips so his hands disappeared under it each time he did.

When she slid down onto him it was deeper and the weight of her and the angle of it when their bodies came together made it feel different. It was his head that fell back this time as he sighed. He broke his silent promise not to be demanding almost immediately and very gently pushed her back. She took the hint and sat up. She knew what he liked as much as he knew what she did.

He saw the small wince because it was just a little too deep when she sat like that. He could feel it as well. She didn't complain as she started to move. The blankets had fallen back and though the fire kept the room from being icy, the air outside their little nest was cold. He only cared for a moment before his eyes traveled up that gap in the jacket where he could see her body and he forgot about everything else. She was all curves and soft edges. Training made her stronger and sometimes he could feel that strength in her when he ran his hands over her thighs or her arms but it didn't seem to be able to alter the soft lines that made up the shape of her.

His hands wandered as she moved. He watched her for the little winces and the sensations that pulled her mouth open and the way her stomach muscles clenched to allow her to do that rolling motion that made his mind spin.

His hands wouldn't stay off of her. They ran up her stomach when she arched back and they grabbed hold of her thighs when she leaned in. Her breasts were under his hands and he squeezed hard enough to pull a little objection from her and his hands fell back to gentle stroking again. When she arched her back there was a curve to her stomach from the place where their bodies met to her rib cage that he couldn't resist.

Sometimes he stopped her just to look at her.

He pulled her hips down tight and that little wince crossed her face before she opened gray eyes. He could barely make the colour out in the dark of the room as the fire was burning down. Her lips were parted, her skin was flushed and she shivered in the moment of stillness. It wasn't sensation, it was cold. He gathered her and rolled her over into the space where he had been lying, where it was warm. He pulled back the nest of blankets back into place around them and made sure they covered every inch of her. She shrugged out of the jacket and he pushed it out onto the floor so he could feel all of her skin without it in the way.

He didn't stop. Once the blankets were in place he was inside her again. Her arms were around him and she was kissing his neck. They were pressed together now and he felt her relax into it. This was her preference, to be held as close as possible. He went slow but hard. He wanted that depth that came with having her on top and to get it like this he had to lean into each stroke. Each time he pushed in she gasped and held him a little tighter. He wasn't sure if it was to encourage what he was doing or if she was seeking comfort.

"Talk to me, Tess," he said. He was all the way in when he turned her face to his. Her eyes didn't focus on him for a moment. He ran fingers down her face and asked, "Am I hurting you?"

"No," she said and she twisted below him in a way that somehow allowed him to slide in just a little further. They were pressed together and he could feel her stomach shudder at the intrusion as her fingers tightened on his shoulder.

"It does hurt," he said.

"It doesn’t. I don't want you to stop," she whispered.

He hesitated but she repeated the request over and over in his ear until he couldn't ignore it. He didn't want to stop and each time she told him to keep going his body responded even if there was a part of his mind that worried. She held on, she whispered and murmured and smiled into his neck and he stopped worrying and did as he was told.

Her hands still wandered over his body but he was more aware of each single movement then he usually was because her fingers tightened with each stroke. They tightened on his hair, at his hip, at his shoulder hard enough that he felt her nails bite in. Her legs had gotten wrapped around his waist and they tensed and released on the harder strokes as well. He was so fascinated by her body that his own release crept up on him.

He leaned in hard and she cried out a little as he grabbed her as hard as she was holding to him. He was stronger than she was and he lost himself for a moment as he felt the orgasm through his entire body. She said his name and it cleared his thoughts. He let go and started running his hands over her to be sure he hadn’t done any damage. She still held him and protested when he tried to pull away from her.

He let himself be pulled in and she nuzzled his neck and shifted her hips. Her legs were still up around his waist and he disentangled himself enough so they could lie on their sides. He took her knee back and dropped it back over his hip so that he was wrapped in her again and still had enough room to reach between her legs.

It was slow and steady because he was already half asleep and it took all his attention not to doze off in her arms. She moved with him. It wasn’t struggling, it was more intentioned than that but there was a little desperation in her that built and built. He pushed a little with his fingers and then held them still. She rocked her hips against that little bit of pressure until she was gasping. He covered her mouth again and pushed her farther into the release so the gasp became a cry.

She collapsed into him, breathing hard, when he released her. He cradled her in close and she left her knee draped over his hip while her head found a space just below his chin so her cheek was against his chest. His arm was going to be numb but he didn’t care.

“Do you ever doubt it?” she asked.

“Do I doubt what, dear heart?” he asked and it came out as almost a mumble. The bed was warm, she was warm, the world outside was cold and he could hear the wind against the window. He was drifting in a dream world.

“That I love you,” she said. He came back a little bit. Her finger was on his chest, just below his shoulder, tracing patterns. Tracing the rune there.

“No,” he said and honesty came out, “I doubt sometimes that I could be good enough for you but I do not doubt love. I doubt neither yours for me nor mine for you. I only hope that I’m worthy of it. I hope I can be the person you deserve.”

“You are,” she said, “You are more than worthy of me, Will. I am the one who got better than I deserve.”

“Not true,” he said.

“Maybe we’re both lucky,” she said and her voice was as soft and dozy as he felt.

“That’s true,” he said.

Though he knew that the doubts would come back, he lay with her in their little nest of blankets and let the certainty wash over him and lull him to sleep. 


	7. Engagement Announcement

She was partially dressed when Will barged into the room. Her chemise and corset in place but her dress still hung up by the wardrobe. The maid gave him a wide eyed look like she was the one being barged in on while in a state of undress and Will stopped and took a deep breath. The girl was fussing with some piece of linen, probably a petticoat though even after four months of being married, Will still couldn't reliably identify everything a woman wore under her skirts.

Tessa did not flinch. Instead, she raised her eyebrows at him and gave him a little smile. Her cheeks coloured but she didn't ask him to leave. She sent the maid off on some errand, claiming she could finish dressing on her own. She didn't. As soon as the door closed, she just turned to face Will wearing the corset and the slip of fabric below it and nothing else. It almost distracted him from the conversation he had had with his sister.

Cecily had taken up double handed swords because, Will suspected, someone had told her it was too difficult to learn with barely a year of training. He had allowed himself to be bullied into twice weekly practice sessions before breakfast which had meant getting up while Tessa was still curled up in the blankets and going to let Cecily hack at him with practice swords for an hour. He hadn’t, on the whole been enjoying it.

"Is this important?" Tessa asked once the door had closed.

"My sister plans to announce her engagement today," Will said.

"And that news couldn't wait for breakfast?" Tessa asked.

"I was quite distraught about it a moment ago," Will said.

"What changed your mind?" she asked.

"You," he said.

"Before you get that look on your face," she said crossing the room to catch his chin in her hand and turn his wandering eyes back up to meet hers, "Admit that you do actually approve of this match and are just being a melodramatic child because you hate to let anything go."

"She's the child. She is too young," Will said.

"No, she's not, or if she is then so are we. She's sixteen, I was a week past my seventeenth birthday when you and I got married," she said.

"He's too old," Will said.

"You're being melodramatic, he's not even twenty," Tessa told him as she shook her head. She was still touching his face and that was distracting too. He wanted to be distracted. He didn’t want to think of his baby sister growing up.

Tessa let him go and went to gather up the petticoats Jenny had left on the bottom of the bed and started pulling them on. Her hair was still down and it fell forward as she looked down to adjust the petticoat to where it needed to be. Will had been present for the other side of this process, the one where all these pieces came off but he'd never watched her put them all on. There were things that proper gentlemen didn't watch, even when it was their wife getting dressed.

"I worry about her, is that such a problem?" Will asked.

"It is when you are throwing a fit over good decisions. They have been pretending they aren't courting for almost a year. He cut off a promising placement to Marseilles six months early to come back to London and if you think that had nothing to do with her then you are blind as a bat, Mr. Herondale," Tessa said.

He followed her over to the bed and leaned against the frame to watch what she was doing. She was adjusting where the petticoat sat at her waist and he reached out to help her. That had been his intention but once his hands were against her he spread them over the heavy fabric of the corset and turned her to look at him. She gave him a pointed look.

"I worry about her," Will repeated.

"So does Gabriel and he brings out the best in her even if you pretend you can't see it. This is a good match and you should offer them nothing but congratulations. Have they set a date?" she asked, "I suppose your parents won't be able to come but perhaps we can have a second reception at the house in York after all the official ceremonies have finished up. That might work."

"Stop planning my sister's wedding, she's going to be insufferable while planning it herself for the next however long. No, they have not set a date. But you are right. Gabriel is a decent man," Will said.

Tessa cut him off, "Gabriel is a good man. Say it with me, this is a good match."

"This is not the worst possible match," Will conceded pulling her a little closer to him, "At least Lightworm is not a true worm like his father. Though that isn't much of an endorsement."

"You're being intentionally difficult," she laughed.

"Very well, it is a good match," he made a show of fake gagging at having said the words which made Tessa laugh.

"See, that wasn't so hard," she said reaching up to touch his face. She had meant it as a patronizing gesture. She was patting his cheek like a little boy. She had been halfway making fun of him throughout the entire conversation. He turned his face and kissed her palm. Her smile changed, softening at the edges as her eyes darted down.

"Let's be late for breakfast," Will said.

"I am already halfway dressed," she said shaking her head.

"But you don't really have to take any of it off for this, we aren't going to wreck your hair. I'll do all the work," he said.

"Talking about your sister's engagement makes you think thoughts like that?" she teased.

"By the Angel, no. You half dressed with your hair everywhere makes me think thoughts like that. So many of them that they are crowding out thoughts of Cecily and whatever his name is. I am so distracted I can no longer remember the man's name. This lacy thing is very distracting," Will said tugging on the front of the petticoat so she was pulled in a little closer.

He leaned in, he wanted her to kiss him. Kissing her was nice but being kissed was somehow better. Every time it was better if she was the one who started it. She laughed again and then indulged him. She leaned up and kissed him. He had gotten taller over the last year and had to bend his head down to meet her. A few days ago, a lady in the park while they were walking together had whispered like it was a conspiracy, "The two of you are going to have very tall children, aren't you?" and in spite of all Tessa's fears of being unable to have children, she had laughed at that too.

Will kissed her harder, holding onto her waist and pulling her in as he did. She smiled through the kiss. He could feel her lips pulling up at the corners as she kissed back. He looped an arm around her waist and lifted her up onto the foot board of the bed. It was solid oak and held up by four posters taller than either of them. The canopy overhead fluttered but the bed didn't even creak as it took her weight. She perched on the edge of it, poorly balanced but he was able to hold her in place.

"Mrs. Herondale, that is really quite a lewd position," Will said.

"If you're going to complain, I shall behave like a church matron. Would you like a sermon on your wickedness?" she said trying to close her knees even though he had already stepped into the space between them. He caught one knee and pushed it wider. She spread them and looked up at him with a dangerous smile on her face.

"You couldn't manage that for two minutes before you came after me yourself," Will said. He leaned into her. She was barely balanced and her only options were to fall backwards onto the bed or grab hold of him. She grabbed on, her fingers tightening in his lapels. He was fully dressed and was going to end up rumpled. But he cared less.

She grinned at him. He matched it and said, "But rest assured, I am not complaining."

He started his hand at her knee, pushing the hem of her chemise up to her hip. She wasn't wearing anything under it yet. Her drawers much have been in the pile of white underthings still by the dresser. Will raised his eyebrows at her as though she'd done it on purpose. She gasped as his fingers reached the point between her legs.

She wasn't wet yet so he started slowly. He made a show of licking his finger before reaching down and rubbing circles against sensitive skin. She leaned in until her head fell against his shoulder. She let him hold her up while the rest of her body woke to his touch. Her body was warm and it didn't take long before there was enough wetness there for him to a push a finger into her as she pressed her knees farther apart. She was caught against him. She didn't let go and he kept his fingers moving inside her until she started to squirm.

He tightened his hold on her waist before pushing her over the edge with two fingers inside and his thumb carefully placed outside that opening. She was a miracle of tightening fingers and spasming muscles and low barely controlled gasps. He pressed his face in close to hers and made it last. She was gasping out his name before he pulled his hand away from her.

"You'd never make it as a church matron," he whispered into her ear and she shoved him in the chest with a laugh. They both almost fell as it unbalanced them. He was leaning in too far and she was held up entirely by his arm around her back. Her breathing heaved against the confines of the corset and he pressed a kiss to the swell of her bosom. Her stays were tight, Jenny had been trained in a mundane household where fashion superseded the ability to run and Tessa always complained that she laced too tight. She hadn't fixed it yet and her breathing was suffering for it.

"I want to push you over backwards and keep going," Will admitted.

"Too high here," she said.

He lifted her and she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as he did. He held her for a moment. She wasn't a small person but he was strong enough that he could have held her like this for hours. He nuzzled her ear and she sighed, pressing her face against his neck. He dropped her down on her back on the bed. She lay back and spread her knees. If sitting on the edge of the foot board was lewd, he didn't have the vocabulary for this. She was flushed and her chemise and petticoat were still pushed up past her hips and her eyes were half shut.

He took his pants off and his jacket but left his shirt and tie on. He didn't want to have to redress completely. They were expected at breakfast and Cecily was going to make her absurd announcement. A part of him wanted to refuse. To refuse to face anything that wasn't Tessa. To just lock the door and retreat to bed for the rest of his life. That wasn't possible but he could retreat to bed for a little bit longer.

He pulled her to the edge of the bed and ran his hands over her legs. She was flat on her back and he was still nearly standing. He stopped for a moment before sliding in and waited for her to look at him, to smile, to reach out and brush her fingers along his stomach. She was warm and wet and still a little bit tight as he pushed in to her. He knew her body well enough to start slow.

Her head fell back when he pressed in and her mouth fell open. He was deep enough to make her wince, standing made it possible to slide in farther than he usually did.

"Did that hurt?" he asked. He had frozen when her eyes had fallen shut.

"No," she said.

"Are you telling me the truth?" he asked sliding out just a fraction and then pushing back and getting that same wince.

"It's good, I like it, just not too hard," she said. She pet his stomach without sitting up. Her fingers only able to reach the lower part of his body. Her hands were on his stomach and his hips and the skin there was far more sensitive than he had imagined it being. He was standing still, looking down at her with her too tight corset and her spread thighs.

In over a year of knowing Tessa Gray, in three months of spending every day with Tessa Herondale, he had managed to get over most of his fears of hurting her. He was a Shadowhunter and he was stronger than most people but he was not stronger than Tessa. She wasn't a vulnerable flower he needed to save from every danger. She was something stronger than that.

But knowing that, and looking down at her, vulnerable and wide eyed, wasn't quite the same thing. He leaned down over her and pressed a kiss to her mouth. He was still standing at the edge of the too high, too big bed but being closer helped push away that feeling that he was going to hurt her. She kissed him back. She pushed her fingers into his hair and grabbed hold tight enough to make him wince. She wasn't a shrinking violet. He kissed her and moved his hips.

Leaning over her didn't reduce the angle and she still winced a little as he pressed into her just a little farther than usual. She didn't stop him. She stroked his hair and kissed his mouth and whispered encouraging things in his ear and so he didn't stop. His slowness fell away. Her winces were swallowed by gasps and the way her back arched up into him in spite of the corset.

He came before she did, he leaned in hard and she cried out into his ear as his release ran through him. He caught himself on his elbows on either side of her and breathed hard for a few moments. He was softening inside her and her face was no longer just flushed. It was red and she was pulling in air through an open mouth. He kept his face close to hers and used his hand on the back of her neck to keep her looking at him as he used his fingers to force her to another release of her own.

"Would you like some breakfast?" he asked once they were both breathing normally.

"No," she said.

"I think it would be rude if we didn't go," he said.

"Cecily would forgive us," she said snuggling in and nuzzling his neck just above his collar.

"What Cecily will forgive you and what Cecily will forgive me are not the same things," Will said, "Come now, get dressed."

He didn't pull away. He stayed over her, he kept his fingers between her legs, stroking slow lazy circles that made her groan softly. Her hair was spread all around them. Her flush was retreating and her breathing was coming back down.

"My ribs hurt and I am going to be a mess through breakfast, thanks to you," she said.

He hadn't thought of that. She wasn't going to have time to bathe again before the breakfast bell rang, they were going to be late as it was. That meant she was going to have either skip breakfast entirely or go with the evidence of what they had just done trickling down her thighs.

"We're coming back here after breakfast," Will said, "Don't worry about being a mess."

She had to rush him out of the room and ring for Jenny to get her hair fixed up and the rest of her clothing on. She didn’t look like a mess at breakfast. She wore a neat dress in pink and yellow and her hair was coiled up in a simple but elegant fashion. She sat across from him and gave him little looks that made him want to toss the entire meal out and have very different things for breakfast.

Will should have thought his suggestion through a little farther before he said anything. Breakfast was an exquisite sort of torture in which he was too kind to Gabriel, too terse with the servants, couldn't concentrate on a single thing his sister said and only just managed to catch the inappropriate things that wanted to come out of his mouth when he met Tessa's eye. He left Gabriel with the impression he was pleased to hear about the engagement which led to Gabriel being friendly and clapping him on the shoulder while Cecily beamed at everyone.

"Save me," he muttered into Tessa's ear when the meal was finally over.

"Why would I do that?" she asked.

"Because I caught you watching me while the tea was being poured, you need just as much saving as I do," he said.

They escaped the rest of their responsibilities that lurked after breakfast and retreated back to the bedroom. Tessa paused inside the door. She spun and bit her lip. Will leaned in and pulled her lip out of her teeth to hold it in his. She kissed him back before stopping him with a hand flat on his chest and a stern expression on her face.

"Don't wreck my hair, I have an errand at eleven," she said.

"How's your balance?" he asked.

Protecting her hair meant keeping her from being flat on her back and keeping her from having to move too much. They settled with her, fully dressed except for what they absolutely needed to remove to make it possible, sitting up on the foot board. She braced her arms on Will's shoulders and he slid into her again without any preamble. She shivered but her body was warm and wet and didn’t need it.

He wanted to press is face into her throat but didn't want to have to risk the coil of hair at the nape of her neck. He pressed their foreheads together instead and kissed her every time she gasped. He was less gentle. This angle didn't allow him to slide in quite as far or maybe she was just too aroused to care but either way she didn't wince as he took her hard and fast. The bed frame creaked around them with each impact. He lasted longer than he had the first time and managed to pull a smothered cry out of her before he came close to his own release.

He used his hand to push her to a second one as he came close. He loved when she came in concert with him, her body shuddering along with his. When they were both done, he pulled her forward and helped her stand. Excepting the pink across her cheeks or her heavy breathing, she looked ready for an errand with a friend. She didn't look debauched though he had done a pretty thorough job of it.

He carefully straightened out her skirt and and tucked a piece of hair back into place while she held herself up with a hand on his shoulder. He put a finger on her chin and closed her mouth.

“You are perfectly respectable, I might even believe that you were a church matron,” he said.

“You are incorrigible,” she said.

“I am,” he said kissing her gently. He was still in a state of undress and she looked him up and down.

“Get dressed, you agreed to go along with Gabriel when he went down to the Fae markets for inspections,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Will sighed, he had, he had been thinking about Tessa when he’d done it but he had said those words, “I did. Damn it. It will take roughly three brownies being rude before I kill either him or one of them.”

“If everyone survives, we can do that,” she waved her hand to encompass the things they had done that morning, “Before dinner but only if everyone comes back alive.”

“You cannot bribe me into good behaviour by offering your body as a reward,” he said.

“Well then, as a matron of the church, I will appeal to your better nature and the teachings of the holy book but I still want to do that again before dinner,” she said.

Before he could answer that, she gathered up the bits of clothing she had taken off and pressed a kiss to his cheek before disappearing off behind the changing screen. He stared after her and bit his lip hard enough that the pain should have pulled him back down to earth but it didn’t. He got redressed and when she darted past him on her way to go get her things together for her errand he caught a kiss.

“I am going to be distracted all day,” he said.

“As long as you don’t kill your future brother-in-law, you’ll manage,” she said and the prospect of being Gabriel’s brother-in-law made him groan but she was already headed out of the bedroom and he he was left with too vivid imaginings and memories worth being distracted by.


	8. Swimming Lessons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been over a year since I've added to this fic and it's been almost as long since I've written anything with recently married Herondales so there's a lot of this chapter (~4000 words) that is just me getting back into them and their dynamic before I could write some smut.

Tessa had been stirring her tea at the breakfast table when she had admitted that she didn't know how to swim. She hadn’t thought it would mean anything. It was nothing. She hadn't known anyone else growing up in New York who could swim. It wasn't something that either ladies of good breeding or children in the city ever learned how to do. 

Since Tessa's childhood had ricocheted between the two depending on whether or not her aunt was around it had meant she’d never been more than ankle deep in water outside a bathtub. Harriet had wanted her to grow up to be a proper lady but sometimes she had taken jobs that left Nate and Tessa alone in the apartment. Being children, they'd escaped to play made up games on the corners with the other children in the neighbourhood. Lady in training or urchin depending on the day. But neither of those things had led to swimming lessons. 

"Isn't New York an island?" Will asked. 

"People swim in the Hudson about as often as they swim in the Thames," Tessa told him. 

"You truly never learned to swim?" Will said. 

"I've told you twice now, no," Tessa said. 

"You should learn." 

"I'm not swimming in the Thames and the fountain in Trafalgar is hardly deep enough to allow for lessons." 

"My wife is very picky about these things isn't she?" Will said to the maid who looked at him with wide eyes.

Tessa couldn't tell if he sometimes forgot that Jenny was a little bit terrified of him or if there was some part of him that liked teasing her. He was never cruel about it but at moments like this, Tessa thought perhaps he was just testing to see if Jenny still reacted to him with those wide eyes and nervous stuttering. When Jenny didn't answer him, he looked almost guilty. He asked for more toast and she scurried off to the kitchen. It gave her something to do and saved her the embarrassment.

"Tiáoqíng," she accused once Jenny was out of the room. 

Will’s sad smile surprised her but his tone was still joking when answered in English, "I would never flirt with anyone, it would be indecent."

"Oh, no, of course not, never you," she said and he gave her a broad grin in response, leering a little before launching into shameless flirting that was ridiculous. Neither of them mentioned Jem by name. Will covered up that moment of sadness with enough innuendo and borderline impropriety that Tessa was giggling and shaking her head at him by the time the toast came out.

 

* * *

 

She had forgotten about the exchange until he had shown up with train tickets and announced they were going to the beach. He left the Institute in Gabriel's hands for a few days and it took all of Tessa's self control not to tease him about how it proved he really did think well of his sister's fiance.  They headed for a little seaside patch of private land owned by the Clave. It was technically a piece of countryside intended for training Shadowhunters but no one else was scheduled to be out on it that week so Will had claimed it. 

"Is it immoral to use a training ground for a holiday?" she asked. 

"This is a training exercise," he argued. 

"Training in what?"

"Swimming." 

She had laughed. 

He had meant it. 

The beach was quiet and sandy and the day had dawned warm and overcast. Little flecks of white seabirds whirled high above them in the gray blue sky and there was no one around for miles. Tessa, ever the city girl, found that isolation unsettling. The house had been empty, the furniture covered in sheets and witch lights kept low, when they had arrived the night before. It had been a cold and ghostly place until they’d found the little suite that had been prepared for them with the sheets pulled back and a cold dinner waiting.

There was a maid who would come back to the manor house to fix dinner and start the fires but she only arrived in the afternoons. For now, they were the only people for miles. 

Will had woken early and coaxed her out of bed and down to the seashore after a small breakfast. Tessa hadn’t quite understood his excitement until this moment. He had his face tipped back to the breeze and a little smile on his lips. He looked at the ocean and the country side like it was an old friend. The breeze ruffled his hair and he looked peaceful. 

"If you had asked me when I had first met you, I wouldn't have thought you were capable of being this serene," she said. 

"I probably wasn't capable of being this serene when you met me. I'm still getting used to it," he answered without opening his eyes. 

"Used to it?" 

"To being happy." 

Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them back as she laced her fingers with his and leaned her head on his shoulder. He kissed her forehead then rested his cheek against the spot. For a long time they just stood together, watching the waves roll in and break against the sand. His hand was warm in hers and the isolation wasn't nearly so unsettling because they were together. Alone with Will wasn't the same thing as alone. 

"Do you know anything about swimming?" he asked turning his face into her and speaking with his lips against her hair. 

"No." 

"First one must get in the water," he said in a soft voice like they were still speaking over more serious things. Tessa snorted and spun on him, shoving him hard in the chest. He laughed and stumbled back. 

"I know that much," she said. 

"Go on then, into the ocean with you," he said. 

"It's going to be freezing," she said. 

"It's not freezing. It's the middle of summer. It might be a little chilly." 

"It's the ocean."

"It's July." 

"If you're so sure of the water, you go in." 

Tessa crossed her arms and frowned at him. It was mostly for show but there was a piece of her - the same piece that found the isolation unsettling - that didn't like the size or the movement of the water. Riding in a ship wasn’t the same as climbing into it with her feet bare wearing nothing but a bathing costume. Oceans weren't controllable. If she started out in the direction she was facing, she would eventually make it took another country. She hadn't bothered to ask which coast of England they were on but she couldn't see land beyond the water and that was enough to make it seem huge even if France wasn't so far away.

She hated that it made her nervous. It felt as irrational as being afraid of the dark.

A child’s fear. Not the fear of a trained Shadowhunter.

She had faced down demons and automatons. This was just water. Still, she wouldn't have even considered getting more than her feet wet if Will wasn't right there within arm's reach. As much as it annoyed her, the irrational reaction wasn't going anywhere. She didn't admit the fear to him. She just raised her chin and pursed her lips and waited for him to get in first. 

He wore something part-way between gear and a bathing costume. It was made of dark fabric but not nearly as heavy as proper gear but it also fit tighter than a bathing costume that Tessa had seen in look-books and mail order catalogues. Too much fabric was a hazard when one needed speed in the water because it would billow and pull and was too easy for something to grab. Shadowhunters had designed their own costumes for swimming like they did everything else. 

"Are battles in water really common enough to have special gear for it?" she asked. 

"Not here but the Dead Sea has quite a problem with water demons and battles are regularly waged in the water there," Will said. "Now stop stalling."

He took a few steps towards her and before she had a chance to realize what he was doing, he swooped forward and scooped her up. She yelped and started to twist out of his hold as he threw her over his shoulder but he had a fistful of the bathing suit she was wearing and getting away from him would probably mean tearing it. 

That was her excuse if he'd bothered to ask. He didn't. She braced herself upright and twisted to look out at the water. 

Will was laughing at her as he carried her down the beach at a run. They hit the water and it splashed everywhere as he ran into the shallows. They were both yelling. Not really saying anything just laughing and shrieking like little children. When they were waist deep in the water, he dumped her in. She barely had enough time to hold her breath. 

The water closed over her head. 

It was cold. Very cold.

Tessa swore in surprise as she scrambled upright, grabbing his shirt to pull her head back above the water. She sputtered and held on until she could get her feet under her. Will had been splashed with water but was annoyingly dry looking. He was also grinning. She wanted to be angry at him for picking her up and throwing her in the ocean but when she opened her mouth, she started to laugh. She splashed him in the face and he jerked away from her. 

"It is cold," he admitted. 

"It's the ocean. There are icebergs in it!" 

"It's the same ocean in Bermuda and it's warm there." 

"That doesn't mean it's going to be warm here. Bermuda is in the south and maybe their ocean is cold. Have you ever been to Bermuda to ask?" 

Will ignored that comment. She knew very well that he had never been to Bermuda or anywhere farther south than Alicante.

"We'll warm up once we start moving. Come on," he said. 

He held out a hand and she took it. The pull of the waves as they lapped against her hip was a reminder of the size of the ocean. Had this water touched New York's shore? Had it touched Shanghai? Had she sailed by one of these drops on her way to England in what felt like another life? Will was talking but it wasn't about the great poetic questions of nature and the interconnectedness of the world. 

For once, she was the one waxing poetic while he was talking about practicalities. He was explaining the mechanics of swimming. 

Will had surprised her when they started training together by being a very good teacher. He explained things clearly, he knew when to take a break and when to push harder. There was a deep well of patience in him that didn't extend to everyone or everything but seemed to be bottomless where she was concerned. He would explain and reexplain and work through the same challenges with her over and over again without a trace of annoyance. 

Swimming though was a completely different kind of movement to anything she had done before. She had never even seen someone do it up close. Her aunt had considered swimming indecent and the one time they'd spotted someone in the pond in Central Park, Harriet had shielded Tessa's eyes and marched her straight back home. Will describing it wasn't going to help her no matter how clear and accurate the explanation. 

"Show me," she said. 

He smiled and then disappeared. 

Shadowhunters moved fast and just when she thought that she was finally used to it, a moment like this would come along. Will disappeared into the water head first but she barely saw it before he was swallowed up by the dark ocean. He went under and didn't come up again. She was expecting him to model the arm movements he had been talking about, she was not expecting him to vanish. 

"Will?" she called out. 

No answer. 

Nothing but the slow roll of the waves as they bumped into her. 

She would not over react. 

She wouldn't.

She was smarter and calmer than that. She repeated that to herself again as she spun and looked toward shore and then back out at the dark water beneath the gray sky. The waves kept the water from being perfectly flat but it wasn’t so choppy that she wouldn’t have seen him if he had surfaced. 

"Will!" she called out. 

Nothing.

Then hands on her waist. She jumped and he caught hold of her a little tighter. He had circled around behind her and had come up at her back. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her neck. His wet hair brushed her skin and she shivered from both the cold and the sensation. Her heart was beating too fast but she didn't complain or argue. She composed her expression and spun in his arms. 

"You-" she started but was momentarily distracted by the wet hair in his eyes and quirk of his grin. The weather had washed out the colour in the rest of the world. They wore dark clothes, the water was a blue gray that flirted with black beneath pewter skies and from a distance the yellowy shore grass and the beige sand looked grayish as well. Will's eyes were vibrant blue against all of that and the sight of him, wet and happy and staring at nothing but her made her breath catch. 

"Me?" he pointed at himself.

She kissed him. He tasted like salt water and Will and his fingers flexed at her waist before he pulled her in closer and kissed her back. She had surprised him and that made her bolder. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let the gray day melt away into the kiss. The breeze was cold against the wet fabric clinging to her back and he wasn't much warmer but she cuddled in close just in case he would warm her up. 

"You're supposed to be learning to swim," he whispered against her mouth. 

"We've got three days before we go back to London," she said. 

"Please?" he said pulling back a little. 

"Why do you want me to swim?"

"So I don't have to worry about you drowning."

"Is that a concern of yours?"

"Sometimes." 

Tessa looked him straight in the eye and frowned at him a little. She was cold and wet and the disappearing act hadn't helped her nerves. She wanted to go inside and curl up by the fire and do nothing but kiss him and drink hot chocolate until it was time to go to bed. This beach had missed the memo about July and she wanted to go and be warm.

And yet.

A little competitive urge in the back of her mind argued against going inside. If Will wanted to show off, she could show off too. She was already digging through her memory for the change before she'd decided to do it. 

It had been an uncomfortable change the single time she had done it in the Dark Sister's horrible basement. She remembered it as one of the worst changes they’d asked of her. The panicked constriction of not being able to breathe as she'd collapsed to the floor had been enough to knock her out the change in less than a minute. She had never tried again.

Now she pulled the memory up and grabbed hold of the change. Before she pulled it around hersel, she untied the draw string on the trousers of the swimming costume and kicked them loose. Will frowned at her, not realizing what she was doing until it had already happened. 

The mermaid was a faerie which meant that Tessa couldn't access anything of her memories and wouldn't be able to hold the change long but for at least a few minutes, she was going to be the one to swim circles around Will. She registered his shocked expression before she fell back into the water. The body breathed on its own but the sensation of pulling water through gills was utterly alien. She fought her human body’s urge to take a gasping breath as she readjusted.

And listened. 

Because the ocean sang and she had just never been able to hear it before. 

It sang a dark and beautiful song.

She sank down, curling up on the sand at Will's feet and just listened to it for a moment. Above her, Will spoke but his human words were nothing to the sound of the waves. He was above the surface and nothing above the surface could matter that much. The ocean called for her. This body could swim to Bermuda or New York or Shanghai and it wanted to. 

Will dropped into the water in front of her and reached out. She laced her greenish fingers with his and uncurled from the sand in a burst of speed. The mermaid's body was bigger than his, a long glittering tail that stretched out nearly six feet on its own. She pulled Will along with her for a few beats before hauling them both to the surface. 

Out of the water, the song wasn't as strong. The air dimmed the sound and she ached to dive back under and keep chasing it.  

"Not what I was expecting to happen today," he said. "This is amazing but not what I meant." 

He was treading water, his arms and legs paddling to keep his head up and it was funny to some piece of the mermaid brain. She couldn't find the mermaid's thoughts but little opinions crept through the haze between Tessa's mind and the spark of the change. Mostly the change was just instinct driven by the song of the ocean.

"Again?" she asked in a voice that wasn't hers. If she could just remember the words, she could sing the song of the ocean in that voice. The change wanted that but she pushed that urge away and kept her eyes on Will. 

Will. 

Will would keep her from losing herself to the ocean. 

"Back towards the beach?" Will suggested. 

"Should I take you home, Mr. Herondale or shall we swim for Bermuda and follow the song to ends of the earth?"

"Tess? Are you still yourself?"

"I can hear the ocean," she said. 

"Fine, you can hear the ocean, take me back to shore, take us both back to shore, please."

They were farther out than she'd expected. It hadn't felt like very far but eight feet of mermaid body could cut through the water incredibly fast. Will's heart was beating out a staccatto rhythm that she could hear even through the air around them and she wondered if she had scared him. That thought was lost in the haze between Tessa and the mermaid. 

She held onto his gaze and the request to return to shore. Just one single thought. She could do that. Haze or not. Just hold the change and get back to shore. Because Will had asked her. Because Will needed to be back on land. He didn't belong to the ocean.

Will took a deep breath and ducked under the water and she grabbed hold of him. She dove back in and swam away from the song and pulled him back the way they had come. Nearer the shore, the song was fainter and that made it easier for her to think as Tessa.

Tessa wanted her own body back. 

That thought suddenly consumed her. She needed to be close enough to shore to stand up in her own body with her own feet under her and the ocean silent and gray again. She beat the tail against the water in an instinctive rhythm that she didn’t need to think about to propel them through the water.  

She dropped Will off in the sand where it was just shallow enough for him to stand and keep his shoulders above water. She twisted her hand in his shirt before she turned back into herself. She shuddered as he pulled her back up so her head broke the surface. Her feet only barely touched and the water was colder and even more unnerving when the song of the ocean was still right there in her ears. 

"That was a bad idea," she said once she’d gotten her breath back. 

She was curled against Will and he was talking but it took her a moment to readjust between the change and her own body. Downworlder changes were always harder to manage than human ones. There was the power that a warlock's personality could have over her actions, the controlled silence of a vampire, but she'd never spent enough time in a Faerie body to really appreciate that they were so different from humans. At least the mermaid seemed to be made more of instinct than thought. It had been her own mind but she hadn't felt fully in control. 

"That was quite the experience," he said. 

He was holding her up. Her feet were off the ground and she had both hands wrapped around his neck. She had taken off half her clothes and was floating in the ocean wearing nothing below the tunic that only just reached the middle of her thighs. She buried her face against his skin and closed her eyes against the expanse of the water and the memory of the ocean's song. She was held up by Will and the water and she swayed with the waves.

"I don't want to learn to swim today," she said. 

"The point that if you were drowning, you could just turn into a mermaid is a good argument against further swimming lessons," he said. 

"I do want to learn," she said. "I don’t want to rely on that. I- I mean to say- Just not right now." 

The overpowering rush of the instincts that had come with the change had scared her. The ocean scared her. She was cold and disoriented and wanted to go home. She held onto him but couldn't say the words. The realization that she wouldn't have struggled to say it to Jem washed over her. She held onto Will a little tighter as the wave of missing him hit her. 

She could say this to Will. She could trust him with her fears. She could trust him with anything. She knew that but it was still hard to assemble the sentence in her mind. It came out simpler and plainer than she had intended.

"I'm scared," she forced out past the lump in her throat. "That scared me." 

"I'm sorry, Angel, let's go inside." 

She wanted to tell him that he had nothing to be sorry for as he'd gathered her up and carried her back towards shore but she got distracted by the need to be back on land. He hadn't made an issue of her lost trousers. No innuendo or comments as he helped her shrug out of the rest of the wet clothing and wrapped her up in a towel.

 

Either their maid had arrived or there was some Shadowhunter magic on the building that she didn't understand yet because there was a fire in the grate when they made it back to their rooms. They hadn't seen anyone which Tessa was immeasurably grateful for because Will's wet clothing was still dripping and she was wrapped in nothing but a pair of towels. One around her shoulders like a shawl and the other wrapped tight around her body in a poor imitation of a shift. 

She kicked off her shoes at the door of the private sitting room and padded barefoot into the bedroom to rummage for something warm and flannel in her suitcase. They hadn’t brought much clothing for cold weather but anything would be better than damp towels at that moment. 

Will followed her and left a trail of sodden clothes on the floor. She frowned at the shirt he had dropped and he just shrugged and kicked off the trousers as well. It was inelegant. He hopped a bit on one foot to manage it and his hair was falling in his eyes. He looked less like a distinguished gentleman and more like a little boy. 

"How are you so comfortable running around naked?" she asked him. 

"I look wonderful naked, don't try to deny it," he said. 

He did so she didn't. 

He walked over to her where she stood in her little cocoon of towels and kissed the end of her nose. She had never imagined this being a part of being married. It had never occurred to her to even consider this as a part of being married. This strange comfort with another person's body had come as surprise as it had set in over the first few months of their marriage. That the lines of his body were beautiful and his hair was tightly curled when it was wet like this still held her attention but he was also just Will and it was comforting to have him nearby whether or not he was naked as a jaybird. 

"I'm cold," he said. 

"I told you that the ocean would be cold," she said. 

"Will you help warm me up?" he asked. 

He was very close and very naked and she loved that half smile that was tugging on his lip. She leaned up at kissed him gently. 

A curl of his hair dripped on face and she shivered. She took the towel from around her neck and rubbed at his hair with it until it stuck up at awful angles but wasn't dripping any longer. He let her do it for a moment before jerking back and taking the towel from her hands and returning the favour. Her hair had been tightly braided when she had walked down to the beach but the change into the mermaid had knocked out the ties. It was everywhere and damp and tangled and she jerked away from him to keep him from making it worse. 

He grabbed for her as she pulled away from the towel. 

"It’s going to tangle," she said. 

He stopped but he pouted about it, an exaggerated look that didn't quite survive the tugging smile. He reached for her and she pulled back, thinking he was going for her hair again. He caught the towel she was wearing as a dress and it fell away, leaving her standing naked in the middle of the room. 

"I look good naked and though it pains my vain and arrogant self to say it, you look so much better," he said.   
   
"Come here," she said with a laugh. 

He crossed the space to her. The day had remembered that it was July and now that she was away from the sea breeze, she wasn't shivering anymore. Just standing naked with him made her body warm and she bit her lip against the curling smile. Will slid his hands up her arms, his fingertips started on her wrists and then traced higher, making her smile as her heart rate picked up speed. He leaned into her and she tilted her head back to meet the kiss. 

Warm and soft and with just a hint of salt water still on his skin. 

He had picked her up and tossed her into the freezing sea water but now he was soft as satin and rose petals. She melted into it. He cupped her face in his hands and she stepped into him so their bodies touched. Her hands had found his waist and traced down to his hips then up to his ribs and over his chest. She went as slow as he did. Every gentle kiss got a matching gentle touch. His skin was still damp and clammy but she was warm and safe. 

"Are you cold?" she asked. 

"A little."

"Should I warm you up?"

"Yes, please, I would enjoy that." 

"Should I order tea?"

"No," he laughed and then met her eye to gauge whether or not she was joking. She didn't let her smile change. 

"Are you sure?" she asked, polite and even as her expression.

"Yes, very sure. There are other things that might warm me up." 

Tessa laughed and leaned in closer to him. He was getting hard and she could feel it against her skin when she brushed her body along his. Against her hip and stomach and hip again. She rocked her hips against him just to feel it. He made a sound but bit it off before it became anything more. Tessa grinned and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. 

Her hand slid to his hip then across his stomach until she could touch him with gentle fingers. He groaned again but didn't catch it this time. He leaned his face into her hair. Soft skin, damp hair, cool clamminess warming to the temperature of the heated room. The smell of salt air and woodsmoke and Will's skin. It was a heady scent and she didn’t think she’d forget it. 

Tessa sighed as she wrapped her hand around him and stroked slowly. She smiled and cuddled in close. His cock was caught between their bodies. She tilted her head and watched his face as she did it. She liked being able to see the expressions, to see the ways that she could affect him with just her fingers. She was slow and gentle and he pressed into her touch with a soft murmur. 

“Warmer?” she asked. 

“Better but still cold,” he said.

He kissed her shoulder then pressed a line of kisses towards her collarbone then along her chest and out to her other shoulder. She was as slow and gentle as he was. His mouth was so much warmer than her skin and his hands had settled on her waist and his fingers flexed a little with every stroke of her hand. Holding onto her, keeping her close. 

Will's hands started to wander and when he nudged her thigh, she shifted her feet so her legs were farther apart. The floor was polished but uneven wood and her bare feet sliding over it reminded her that she was standing in the middle of a sitting room wearing nothing and doing the type of things that certainly weren't meant to happen in csitting rooms. That thought didn't have enough time to settle before Will's fingers found what they were looking for and he stroked her.  

"We're in the middle of the room," she said. 

"Are you worried about falling down?" he asked. 

She hadn't actually considered that. She was more worried about the invisible maid showing up and catching them like this. He smiled at her and led her over to the chairs around the fire without removing his hand from between her legs. She laughed and grabbed hold of his shoulders to keep from being unbalanced as she walked backwards. She'd forgotten what she had been doing with her hands. He hadn't. Gentle and slow and finding all the right places by touch alone. A little tremour of pleasure started to curl in her belly. 

The chairs were warm from the fire and upholstered in a rich pattern of red and gold. Will knelt and for a moment she just stood over him and pet his hair. He tilted his head up at her and his eyes were still the brightest point of colour in the room. He was smiling and his hand was still between her legs. Tessa watched him very slowly turn to press a kiss to her stomach then another. She closed her eyes and drifted. 

"I'm incredibly lucky to have you," she said. 

"Darling, you deserve better me and you know it," he said with a little laugh and another kiss. 

"Will," she said.  

He ignored her tone, leaning his cheek against her hip and rubbing a little harder like he was trying to distract her from having made the comment at all. His hair was soft and still wet against her skin and she almost let him push the conversation away but he was close enough that when he sighed, she felt it. She felt the expansion on his ribs against her leg and the rush of air across her belly. Silent but impossible for her to ignore. 

She sat down, pulling away from him a little and perching on the edge of the chair. He blinked at her. His hand rested against her thigh and he seemed startled that she had moved. She cupped his face in her hands and studied it. The orange glow of the firelight lit one side and the dull gray of the day beyond the window the other, each picking out slightly different lines of his jaw and cheeks and the line of his nose.

"I don't care what you think I deserve," she said. 

"That’s a poor decision. I think you deserve all sorts of wonderful things," he said trying to make it a joke. 

"I don't care." 

"Are all American women this contrary or is it just you?" 

"Shush, William, I'm attempting to be serious."

"I'm attempting to mock your country and personal conduct." 

"And yet, I still don't care. I don't care what you think I deserve or what you think Americans are like or what the Queen of England's opinions on the matter are. I know what I want," she said. 

"What do you want?"

"You," she said. 

"You'll always have me, forever," he said in that serious voice he only used when he really meant something. He made it sound like a vow and her heart went out to him. 

She leaned in and pulled his face a little closer to kiss him. Deeper than the last one. Harder and more demanding. He smiled into it before returning it properly. His hands fell to her knees then slid higher. She leaned back into the chair and there wasn't really anywhere for him to follow her but his mouth was already working its way down her neck and across her chest. 

His hands paused to tease at her nipples and they tightened immediately under the touch. He ran his tongue over them until she squirmed a little then he was moving back down her body. One hand lingered, stroking absently as his other hand slid lower with each kiss. 

The fear of getting caught was gone. Most thoughts that weren't explicitly about the details of him were gone. She leaned back in the chair and tossed a knee up over the arm in what she hoped was a clear invitation. Will pulled back and rested his cheek against the raised knee and studied her with a smile on his lips. She had to be a wreck. Her hair was mostly dry but it was still tangled and stuck to her skin. She could feel the flush on her skin and she bit her lip to keep from panting or begging. He was still going so slowly.  

The warm fluttery feeling had given way to a rush of desire when he'd made that promise of forever. 

Will could tell. She knew he could tell and it would have made her feel terribly exposed if it had been anyone else. He could see the shift in her and he was going to slowly indulge it but she was perfectly safe. She didn’t really want him to go slow but she settled back and kept her mouth shut and let him decide what he wanted to do to her. 

He kissed her knee as his fingers made it back down to the place between her legs. She slouched down a little more in the chair and spread her knees wider. If she was going to look utterly debauched anyways, there wasn't much to be gained by being coy about it. Will was petting and watching her. She held the eye contact and waited. His fingers slid up and down without any real art or intention to them and she let herself relax into the touch. 

He kissed her knee and then kissed down her thigh. Those kisses were an almost stronger sensation than his fingers. She watched him move and every time his eyes darted back up to her, she smiled at him. She didn't realize that he was asking permission and his mouth was against the little hollow at the very top of her thigh. He looked up again and she nodded and reached down to push his hair back from his forehead so she could see his eyes. 

He kissed the place where his fingers had just been and she shivered. It wasn't so much because of the sensation as the intimacy. It didn't feel so different from the press of fingers but looking down her body and seeing him that close to her there was enough to eclipse any other thoughts. He kissed her again. Then again. A little harder each time and her hips shifted, pushing closer to the contact without her consciously deciding to do it.

"Do you like that?" Will asked. 

"Yeah," she said. 

He experimented with both his mouth and his hands. Licking and kissing and teasing until her eyes had fluttered shut and she let the world narrow down to the feeling. He could push her over the edge with fingers alone but he was going very slow as he tested what he could do with his mouth. The pleasure was building in her belly and she caught herself shifting against him more than once. He kept a hand on her stomach, stroking in time to everything else he was doing. 

The long slow licks had been her favourite part until he sucked. It was a sharper sensation than anything that had came before it and she gasped sat up out of her slouch. He started to raise his head and she protested. He laughed at her before bending back to her body to do it again. Her reaction changed his approach. It had been pleasurable and relaxing but now he pushed her towards the edge of release. 

"Will," she said and she felt him pull back to look up at her. She reached down to card her fingers through his hair again. "No, no, don't stop, I don't want you to stop." 

He slid his fingers into her and she felt him smile in answer but he didn't say anything. His mouth closed on her again and he stroked with fingers as he sucked and licked and kept a hand on her hip to keep her from squirming too far as the release built. It broke like a wave on a calm day. A slow roll of sensation through her body that made her back arch and a gasp escape. 

Will gentled again but didn't stop. She shivered and twisted against him but he didn't stop.

He licked and stroked her stomach and thighs as she squirmed and finally pulled herself up to sit properly on the chair and push her knees together. She needed to catch her breath. She was panting as she stared at him, still kneeling on the floor between her feet with wet lips and a self satisfied grin on his face. 

"That was delightful. I say we cancel swimming lessons and just make you squirm like that for the rest of our little vacation by the sea," he said. 

"I am not going to object to that," she said. 

He sat up on his knees and took her face in his hands and kissed her. The unfamiliar taste on his lips made her pause but he didn't notice and she let herself be carried into the kiss. His hands slid up her neck and into hair and held her steady as the kiss deepened. The moments after the tremours of the orgasm had subsided always left her craving touch and she slipped her arms around him and pulled herself closer so she could feel more of his skin against hers. 

"Can we trade places?" he asked. 

She nodded and he lifted her up from the chair as he stood. She laughed as he spun around and sat down. He left her standing and she wasn't sure what he wanted her to do. The curiosity to try to use her mouth on him was there but he hadn't sat forward like she had so she wasn't sure how to do it. He reached out and cupped a hand around her knee and pulled it forward so she was straddling his legs. 

"There's a bed right there," she said pointing at the other room. 

"I like this chair, there are so many good memories associated with it already," he said. 

She stepped forward, letting his hands guide her legs to where he wanted her. She looked down at him as he put her in position. He was sitting up and buried his face in her stomach for a moment, his hands still cupped around her legs. she rubbed his back and for a moment, they just rested together. 

"Are you ready to do this again or do you need a moment to rest?"  he asked. 

"I'm ready, I want this," she said. 

He had to sit far forward in the chair so that she could arrange her knees with the chair's arms. She slid down onto him and groaned as her body adjusted to the feeling. She shifted her hips and slid down a little further. Just on the very edge of too much, it was always almost more than she could enjoy. Almost. The feeling of being filled up had become one of the things she loved most about doing this. Will was sitting up and he looped his arms around her waist so she was held close to his body as she figured out how to move in the position.

She rocked her hips. Rolling them forwards and then back so he shifted inside her. He held on tight and buried his face in her neck and let her decide how fast or slow they went. She rubbed his back and kept it slow. Her feet only barely touched the ground, she didn't have enough leverage to do more than move her hips but he didn't complain. They were so close together and he kept murmuring things into her ear and there was no one around for miles to interrupt them or demand anything from them or ring the bell for dinner. There was just this. 

"A little harder?" he asked. 

She spread her knees wider and grabbed his wrist to put his hands on her waist so she could use his hold for the leverage she was lacking. Once he'd sat forward a bit so she could get her feet on the floor, she could push herself up and slide back down on him. Still slow but he sighed and kissed her as he helped guide her hips up and then back down again. 

It wasn't long before he started pushing up to meet her as she came down on him. Their bodies pressed together and it ached a little at the moment when his hips met hers on that upward thrust. She held onto him and her body relaxed into it or maybe her desire was running so hot that the ache was becoming pleasure instead of pain. 

His release came before hers did. 

She felt the tension building in his body and moved her hips a little faster. It wasn't as deep but the way his breathing was speeding up in her ear, she could tell it was working. He wrapped his arms around her in a hug and pulled her down tight against him as he shuddered and groaned. He didn't let go right away. He held on and didn't pull out of her body. They were still crushed together and she was close enough to her own release that the sudden stillness was frustrating. 

"Will?" she started. 

"Hmm?" he said blinking up at her. 

"Can you... Can I..." she was suddenly shy when faced with that expression. His eyes weren't completely focused and his cheeks were flushed.

He gave her a lazy grin and slid his hand down to the place where their bodies joined and rubbed. This wasn't soft or slow or gentle. He watched her face and kept his other arm braced around her waist as he rubbed hard. Her mouth was open and he was still inside her and it crested far faster than she thought it would. She moaned and her eyes fell shut as he coaxed the orgasm out of her. 

"Look at me," he said. 

She blinked her eyes back open and found him smiling and very close. His eyes held her as he pushed her the rest of the way over into another wave of release. She arched against him and then slumped down into his arms. Her cheek settled against his shoulder. He held her and kissed her hair. She didn't ask if he was uncomfortable because she didn't want him to say yes and ask her to get up. 

"Ready for more swimming lessons?" he asked. 

"No." 

"How about some tea and then spending the rest of the day in bed?"

"Yes. That. Let's do that." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit with the mermaid wasn't planned. I honestly had intended for them to do a bunch of making out on the beach and possibly a little bit of foreplay in the water and then for Tessa to make a joke about too much sand and them to go back to the house to have sex. That was the outline. They were supposed to come very close to having sex on the beach, that was intended to be the conceit for this chapter but nope once I realized that Tessa was a little scared and very annoyed about being a little scared, her over compensating by throwing magic at the problem and rushing into it seemed like the most in-character thing for her to do. 
> 
> Also, I have this low-key headcanon that Will sometimes found himself terrified of losing people. Of losing Tessa or his children or Cecily. Of losing them the way he lost his parents when he left to become a Shadowhunter or the way he lost Jem. So that is probably going to show up in other things I write about him.


End file.
